


the benevolence of beverly marsh

by tozier



Series: the love of the losers' club [3]
Category: IT (2017), IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier Are Best Friends, Character Study, Clown Trauma, F/F, Families of Choice, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Lesbian Beverly Marsh, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2020-08-19 16:14:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 33,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20212612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tozier/pseuds/tozier
Summary: be·nev·o·lence (n.)/bəˈnevələns/the quality of being well-meaning; kindness.Beverly knows there’s a lot about her life that’s wrong; from an outsider’s perspective, it might look downright terrible. But she’s fine with it.Really. She’s fine.or, Bev Marsh gets to tell her story, her way, on her terms.





	1. October, 1989

**Author's Note:**

> hello all, it's your friend windy back with another losers' club member character study. i love beverly marsh with my whole ass heart. i'm so excited about the movie. oh my god. hope you enjoy even more nonsense in this 'verse.

_I hope I cut myself shaving tomorrow_   
_ I hope it bleeds all day long_   
_ Our friends say it's darkest before the sun rises_   
_ We're pretty sure they're all wrong_   
  
_And I hope when you think of me years down the line_   
_ You can't find one good thing to say_   
_ And I'd hope that if I found the strength to walk out_   
_ You'd stay the hell out of my way_

_ I am drowning, there is no sign of land  
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand _

—No Children, The Mountain Goats

Beverly Marsh enjoys keeping secrets just as much as she needs to keep them. It’s necessary, really, for a girl like her to survive in the world, and she knows it. Bev knows there’s a lot about her life that’s wrong; from an outsider’s perspective, it might look downright terrible. But she’s fine with it.

Really. She’s fine.

She has her aunt now instead of her father, and that’s been really great so far despite her only moving to Derry two months ago. Her aunt is a kind, gentle woman with a stern grip on reality, and that helps Beverly from straying too far into her own head. _ Keep your feet on the ground, _ her aunt tells her on the bad days. As if it were just that easy. Bev envies her aunt’s ability to will her words to become reality.

_ Self-defense, dear, _ she reminds Beverly when she can’t get out of bed and the memories of her father bleeding out in her old bathroom feel physically suppressive, like she’s going to have to carry his blood underneath her fingernails for the rest of her life, _ remember that, Bevvie. Sometimes just breathing is self-defense. _ Her aunt might be the only person who can still use that name for her without making her flinch.

She has her boys, too—she swears she does. Okay, so she’s been dodging most of their calls lately aside from Bill's, and pretending like she doesn’t see their names listed one after another on the notepad by the phone. And maybe she doesn’t seek any of them out in school, not even Bill. But it’s hard, alright? It’s hard to see them all together, able to act like none of it ever happened, like they don’t even _ remember, _ when all Beverly can _ do _ is remember. She’s saddled with nightmare after nightmare, panic attack after panic attack, sweating through the flashbacks of how Pennywise somehow made its hand around her neck as it lifted her six feet off the ground feel just like the calloused skin of her father’s. 

Her boys are goddamn lucky if they don’t remember.

Eddie has been taking what happened in the sewers harder than any of them. He's the only one aside from Beverly who seems unable to forget. Sometimes she brings Eddie over glam mags and leafs through them with him. Eddie doesn’t stare at her like she’s a freak, a doll, a _ girl. _ He never really looks at her at all, almost like he’s too sensitive to it, like he'd be staring into the sun. She likes the feeling that gives her, akin to power, like she’s more to this world than something to be used. Secrets, secrets. 

She remembers him clinging to her in the sewers, shaking and terrified. She remembers Richie pitching himself into her arms when she finally came to, Eddie following seconds behind. She remembers Eddie when she’s home alone, always home alone because her aunt works nights, can’t be with her all the time. That’s okay, she tells herself. She doesn’t mind loneliness. It’s easier to keep her secrets when there’s nobody to keep them from.

She remembers, and keeps remembering, all the blood. Blood in her veins, blood in the sewers, blood beneath her feet. She doesn’t think she’ll ever stop remembering the way the blood from her father ran so red. It’s easier to force herself into exile than to look at her boys and remember the way their skin shone red from the blood in her bathroom.

At least she has Samantha. Of course she does. Samantha Price is an angel in disguise, and she definitely knows it. Beverly met her first day of Pre-Algebra this year when she asked to borrow a pencil, and Bev teased her about being unprepared for her first day of class. _ We can’t all be bookworms like you, Marsh, _ she smirked, leaning back in her chair like a Thunderbird. Beverly has been well and truly smitten from that point on, but that’s a secret, too. It’s an easy one to keep, though; Samantha never asks any unnecessary questions, not about her past, nor why she sometimes shakes when their hands brush, not even why she flinches so hard whenever anyone bumps into her in the hallway.

Samantha never pushes her too far for anything, not even company. Sometimes, Beverly can’t stand to be around anyone, and Samantha never looks any worse for the wear because of it. Bev is grateful for that as much as she wishes that maybe Samantha would miss her just a little. Beggars can’t be choosers, she supposes.

Of course, she has Richie to fill that slot in her life. Richie Tozier, one of her boys, her most favorite boy (even though that’s a secret, too, because he’d probably squeal like a pig to anyone and everyone if she told him so), has been looking more and more like a wounded dog whenever they walk past each other in school. If she's honest, it’s a little pathetic. The boy is nearly 14 years old and he’s pining over a lost friendship with a girl he fought a demon clown with for _ one _ summer? Honestly, man, grow a pair and move on.

Or at least, that’s what she needs to tell herself to get through the day. If she were honest with herself, which she very rarely is, she misses Richie Tozier like a gaping wound. The laughter he brought to her life opened her up like the first rays of sunshine on the sunflowers in the yard of the Neibolt House; she can’t help but turn to him and watch him shine. He’s been shining a little less relentlessly as of late—still bright, still laughing, always laughing, still photosynthesizing her with every passing grin, but it’s less powerful now. Less potent, maybe. Dimmer.

Fuck, it breaks Bev’s heart. That's pretty pathetic, too, but she can't help it. She loves that little rascal, and she wants him to be happy. Ugh. Richie Tozier has made Bev pathetic. She didn't used to care this much before him. Then again, she'd trained herself to not feel much of anything before him.

Maybe if she weren’t so damned compassionate, she wouldn’t be beneath Richie’s window at 10 P.M. on Halloween Night. Maybe if she weren’t so damned traumatized, she’d be able to handle the little boy who came to her door dressed as a clown. He was so small, makeup smeared, grin broad and proud, shrill voice begging for candy. She wondered fleetingly if he was friends with Georgie. If he remembers Georgie Denbrough even existed at all. Her aunt had to take over after that, and bring her tea that grew cold as it sat untouched on her bedside table while she stared catatonic at the wall, feeling like it was staring right back at her.

It wasn’t. It won’t be for a while, and she knows that; but it will. Someday, the walls will stare at her once more. The images of them all at 40 in the cistern burn hot like a brand in her brain, weigh heavy on her conscience like lead bricks. She told them they’d all be there; she’d lied. She told them how scared they were; the only truth she could manage. She knows what’s coming. Knowledge, she thinks, is a blessing as much as a curse.

So she leashes her aunt’s dog, Lucky, and walks her to Richie’s house. Because as much as she’d like to bask in the sharpness of Samantha Price’s smile and forget for an evening, she knows she needs to face this. As much as Beverly Marsh loves running from herself, she thinks maybe she should put down roots, at least for one night.

She has a feeling like she might waste away into nothingness—float again—if she doesn’t.

All of this leads her to tossing pebbles at Richie Tozier’s second story window. She’s shocked that she remembers which room is his; she was only there once over the summer. Her father wasn’t too keen on her spending time with boys. Her father wasn’t too keen on anything that didn’t involve ownership. She doesn’t know how much time has passed staring at the bright white siding of Richie’s house, watching the shadows of the sycamore tree in his yard play tricks in the moonlight until Lucky begins whining softly at her feet. She doesn’t like to stay in one place for too long, especially with so many people around. Bev doesn’t blame her. 

It’s Halloween, so the streets of Derry are about as packed as they’ll ever be. This Halloween in particular though has a solemn sort of ring to it. She’s noticed that no kid has gone unsupervised, no matter their age. Beverly’s shocked her aunt allowed her to leave without much except, _ call at 11 to let me know you’re safe. _ Her aunt has a lot of trust in Bev, which she tries hard not to be shocked by. She rarely succeeds. Trust isn’t something a lot of people have had in Beverly Marsh.

Lots of houses are playing jazz music from their record players, as if this is 1920s New Orleans and the Axeman is going door to door. Now that she thinks about it, what _ do _ the townsfolk of Derry think happened to all the children? Henry Bowers’ half-dead body washed up out of the sewers with the bodies of every missing kid, and he was sent to Juniper Hill straight after his stay at Derry Home Hospital, but they have to know that isn’t the whole story. They must.

After several minutes of darkness persisting in Richie’s room, she very nearly gives up and goes back home. Lucky’s getting antsy, and Bev is, too—the air around her feels strange, pulled taught like it did over the summer. With the late hour, the littler kids are starting to go home, and the teenagers are coming out to wreak havoc. Beverly _ hates _ teenagers. She knows that, technically, she is one now, but if she were really truly honest with herself, she’d have to admit that she hates herself a little bit, too.

She’s about to turn back and head to the slummier part of town where her apartment complex is, but then she thinks about Richie’s stupid hopeful face with his stupid thick-rimmed glasses that make him look like a stupid puppy, and how he’s looks pretty damn near close to tears whenever they see each other, and _ goddamnit Richie Tozier, _ he made her stupid, too. So she rounds the side of the house and rings the fucking doorbell.

It opens within a few seconds, and she is face-to-face with Richie Tozier, looking absolutely fucking miserable in a half-rate pirate costume. His expression immediately brightens at the sight of her face, but it’s wiped away as soon as Beverly can recognize it and is replaced with one of guarded shock.

“Trick or treat?” Bev asks, smiling slightly and shaking Lucky’s collar gripped tightly in her hand, like it’s the only lifeline she’s got.

“You’re not even dressed up,” Richie says, sounding a little bit far away, kind of like he did in the sewers when Beverly was floating up, up up—

“I know. I brought Lucky. I hope she counts for something.” She shakes her leash again and Lucky’s tail starts wagging a bit faster, her whole back half wiggling with her.

“Oh, yes you did!” Richie cries, abandoning the bowl of candy on a chair in the foyer (he tosses it and candy goes everywhere, but he pays it no mind) and immediately drops down to the ground to visit with Lucky who pounces on Richie the second his knees hit the porch, jumping up in his lap and licking his face incessantly. They’ve only met once, but they got along like gangbusters. It makes sense, Bev thinks—they have a similar sort of energy. “Oh, hi, pretty girl! Look at you! What a good dog you are! Hi! Hi! Have you been good for your Aunt Bev, Miss Lucky?”

“She’s been just fine, but I’m not sure I’d be her Aunt,” Beverly grimaces. “Maybe her… cousin?”

“Cousin Bev has less of a ring to it, but it’ll have to do, won’t it, Luckster? Yes it will! Ohhh, what a sweet girl.” Richie looks up at Beverly, grinning wider than she’s seen in months, Lucky curled up in his lap as best she can for her size, still panting and wagging her tail hard enough that it thumps against the wood frame of the door. It’s such a nice sight.

God, she’s missed him. She can’t believe she ever convinced herself she could go without the light that stupid, buck-toothed, lopsided smile brings.

“You wanna come in? My mom’s working late, but my dad’s here, and so is Lucy. Lucy and Lucky! Oh! _ LUCE! Come meet Lucky!” _

Bev laughs at Richie’s hyper-activity, the way he jumps from emotion to emotion, topic to topic. She can never be bored around him. Can never be truly, deeply unhappy around him. Maybe that’s why she’s stayed away from him for the past few months; she _ wanted _ to be unhappy. Wanted to fester in the blood, let it curl around her skin and pull tight against her until she’s tacky with it, until she can’t see anything but red. Richie isn’t red. Richie is nothing but light.

Lucy, Richie’s sister who Bev’s only ever seen in passing but whose art is hung up in the walls of their high school that she’s always marveled at it with moonstruck eyes, comes barreling down the stairs and skids to a stop with her socks sliding her along the hardwood floor. She's got her ink-blot curls pulled up in a bun on the top of her head, no makeup on, and is fucking radiant. Maybe it runs in the family.

“Richie, I know I told you not to bother me because I hate Halloween, but this is the best thing you could’ve bothered me for. Who is this,” she demands, voice low in a playful way that makes Bev stifle laughter.

“Her name is Lucky, she’s my friend Bev’s dog! Bev, this is Lucy, my second-favorite sister.”

“Second to _ whom,” _ Lucy pouts. Richie points up to Bev, still scratching Lucky behind the ears, and Bev lights up. Feels warm all over. Feels Tozier-radiant, too. She never thought she was a family-oriented person; being traumatized by the only family member you had around for years could do that to a girl. But when Richie grins up at her from under the brim of his bargain-bin pirate hat, tacky and gummy the way a kid who didn’t know any better would, she feels some of Richie’s golden light leak into her.

She smiles apologetically at Lucy, but she’s already waving it off. “I know Richie loves me. He doesn’t need to prove it. Bev, may I pet your dog?”

“I— Yeah, sure,” she says, thrown by the askance of permission more than anything else that’s happened tonight. She doesn’t remember the last time anybody asked permission over her autonomy. She smiles, confused and grateful, and Lucy immediately drops to the floor to crawl over to where Richie and Lucky still sit in the doorway.

“Hi Lucky. It’s very nice to meet you.” Lucy puts the back of her hand by Lucky’s snout, and she sniffs it warily, then excitedly, tail wagging once again. She starts panting, trying to release all her excitement. Bev's foot taps rapidly, feeling the same. “I’m Lucy.” Lucy picks up Lucky’s paw to imitate a handshake, and Bev falls a little bit in love with her.

“Oh, you’re a _ very _ good girl. Hi. Yes, hi.” Bev feels awkward and out of place despite the fact that Richie and Lucy are playing with _ her _ dog. And then Richie looks up at her with narrowed eyes.

“Are you going to join us, Bevvie from the Levvie?”

“Fuck you, Richie from the Ditchie,” Bev chuckles, feeling a little thrown by the name, but not as much as she thought she might. It doesn't sound too terrible out of Richie's mouth, not with all the affection and good humor only Richie can dish out without sounding too vulnerable, too sensitive. So she gets down on the floor with them. Why the fuck not? Richie Tozier has an uncanny ability to make any situation he’s in paradoxically both incredibly awkward and not awkward at all. She lets the stress of the little clown from earlier tonight and the panic attack it spurred release from where she’s been allowing it to carry her forward. She settles into the doorjamb and lets the sounds of teenagers laughing, Richie and Lucy cooing, and her dog panting be the thing that plays on repeat in her mind instead of _ you’ll die if you try, you’ll die if you try, you'll die if you try. _

Eventually, Lucy heads back up to her room with a grateful smile, a wave, and a "Nice ta meetcha." Bev waves back, inexplicably a little sheepish, and Richie grins at her.

“What,” Bev challenges once Lucy has disappeared up the stairs, narrowing a look at him that she hopes channels _you’ll die if you try_.

“Nothing!” He swears, raising his hands, but still grinning. Bev glares harder. “You just seemed to really _ get along _ with my sister, Levvie. Should I be worried you’ll leave me for her?”

“Never, Ditchie. No one could ever fill the void in my heart that your garbage takes up.” He sticks his tongue out at her, and she mirrors it, and for the first time in her life, she feels like maybe having a family wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe she can eternally be Tozier-radiant. Maybe she doesn’t have to spend her days alone, hiding from men, hiding from being known, hiding from herself. Bev has always felt like she’s on the run from _ something; _ from evil, from her father, from anything that could possibly give her roots. 

She likes Samantha’s role in her life because she doesn’t have to be anything to her, or with her; Samantha isn’t asking for anything from her, and Bev likes that. Richie, however, is nothing like Samantha. He needs from her in a way that scared her at first—desperate if nothing else. But he loves her more fiercely than Samantha does; more than Bill and his unassuming nature, not wanting to ask for too much; more than Ben and his sweet love notes that make her think maybe boys aren’t as bad as they’ve led her to believe. Richie needs more than Bill or Ben ask for, and she’s been a little resentful of it, but now she thinks maybe it isn’t so bad to be needed, especially if she's willing to give what's desired of her.

With Richie fitting his head in the space between her shoulder and her chin, his hair curling around hers, a winding wheel, maybe she doesn’t have to be on the run from everyone. Maybe there’s someone who she can grab by the hand and take off into the night together with.

She’s always wanted to run _ towards _ something, not away, and Richie Tozier is a good enough destination until she can find something brighter. But when Richie tilts his head up, hand curled in Lucky’s sleeping hide in the middle of his foyer, surrounded by bite sized candy and even more wrappers, and _ smiles, _ a thousand-watt love, she doesn’t know if she’ll ever find a place to run to as big and bright as he is.

And for the first time, she doesn’t think she much minds running towards _ someone, _ not away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's [other places to find me](http://rebecca.carrd.co).


	2. August, 1993

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what's creepy is i wrote almost all of this chapter before chapter two dropped. bitches call me the bev whisperer. i'm bitches.

_I hate you for what you did_  
_ And I miss you like a little kid  
__I faked it every time, but that's alright_  
_ I can hardly feel anything_  
_I hardly feel anything at all_

_I have emotional motion sickness_  
_ Somebody roll the windows down_  
_ There are no words in the English language  
I could scream to drown you out_

—Motion Sickness, Phoebe Bridgers

Beverly has nightmares every single night.

It isn’t something she’s too keen on sharing with anybody, a little bit embarrassed that she’s still thinking about her father so long after his bones have been buried six feet under. She has nightmares about the police coming to her door and carting her away in handcuffs while her aunt—late-mother's sister—shrilly yells to them _ self-defense, you blue-collared assholes! _ She has nightmares about the way the clown unhinged its jaw and pulled her in, up, up. She has nightmares about all her friends dying by the clown, by their own hands, by _her_ hand. She has nightmares about Bill clutching his little brother’s rain jacket, crying and crying, completely unable to stop. She has nightmares about her father’s hand in her hair, in her shirt, in her—

She hates sleeping as a result of all this, so she doesn’t sleep too much. However, that isn’t sustainable for anybody, let alone a teenager who spends most of her free time studying, pulling pranks with her best friend, and trying very hard not to kiss Samantha Price. The latter hasn’t been going very well, not very well at all, especially because Samantha keeps looking like she might want to kiss her just as much. 

She’s under a lot of undue stress. A shit ton, as her aforementioned best friend might say. So she randomly passes out from exhaustion when she does not give her body permission to sleep. Tonight, she fell asleep at around 9 after studying at her desk, and woke up at 2:56 covered in sweat. She might be able to take the nightmares if she didn’t fucking remember them all in painstaking detail.

Tonight’s was a doozy though. She can’t stop shaking. She feels like she might vom all over the floor if she moves more than the shaking forces her body to do. It wasn’t a dream so much as a memory. She was small, so small, and her mother had just passed away. She thought that her mother dying might make life easier on her, make her father stop taking her mother’s sickness out on Bev. But all it did was cause him to put a padlock on the front door, make him force her to tell him everywhere she went and who she went there with. Third grade, the year of the play, one of the only times Bev ever felt safe as a child up on that stage with the softness and kindness of Bill Denbrough.

But the kiss didn’t make her father too happy. No, not happy at all.

The worst part, though, was in the corner of her eye, she kept seeing the looming figure of the clown, but whenever she’d turn to look at it, it would disappear. She has to flip the light on when she is finally able to move, too terrified of what lurks in the shadows. 

She thinks about calling up Bill, but quickly wills the thought away. Bill’s parents have gotten stricter since Georgie’s death, not allowing Bill to go out with his friends seemingly at random. It makes sense to Bev after all they lost, but it doesn’t make for a comfortable household. They sleep a lot, bogged down by depression and grief, and Bev rarely feels the need to disturb the thick fog that blankets the Denbrough house. 

The therapist the two of them share would probably say they need to deal with their grief and trauma on their own so they don’t become too codependently tangled. _ Your Post-Traumatic Stress reactions cause your nightmares, Beverly, _ she told her when she admitted to them. _ But you can own those reactions. They don’t own you. _Bev would rather die than rely on anyone but herself. Not for anything, and certainly not for comfort.

But Richie. His parents are kind, have had so much less loss, always ask her how she’s doing like they genuinely want to know. She doesn’t _ need _Richie for comfort. Certainly not. But she doesn’t think it would be so bad if she wanted it.

She scribbles out a note and leaves on her kitchen table. _Hi Auntie — Went to Richie’s. Be back tomorrow _♡ _B._ She stuffs her backpack with a change of clothes, and her _Heathers_ VHS, hoping to entice Richie into staying up with her if she brings a movie. She quietly steps over Lucky sleeping in the foyer and books it down the stairs.

It takes 7 minutes to bike from her apartment to Richie’s house, and she tries not to think about the nightmare on the way there, but passing over the Kissing Bridge doesn’t do her any favors. She thinks about all the horrible things carved into the wood, all the hateful words about her friends, about _ her, _ and she feels a little sick. Feels a little _ angry. _ Feels a little scared.

She parks her bike up against Richie’s house and assesses how she can get to Richie’s room without disturbing the whole house. She deduces that the lattice would be easy enough to climb despite being covered in thick greenery. She’s never done it before, but she figures it won’t be too hard.

Shockingly, the tremor caused from her dream does her no favors, and she almost falls four times. It takes her ten minutes to climb up the lattice, having to stop after every step to control her shakes. She eventually crests the roof, and makes it to Richie’s open window. More easily, she crawls through and plants her feet on the desk, then pushes off and lands in his room.

And then she sees not one, but two people in Richie’s bed.

Her eyes widen as she steps forward one pace, then stumbles back two when she realizes that it’s _ Eddie _ in his bed. Right. It’s Saturday. Eddie always sleeps over on Saturdays.

Cheeks flaming, she turns to go crawl back out, but trips over Richie’s sneakers sprawled haphazardly on the floor, cursing as her knee hits the desk, and Richie sniffs awake.

“Who's there?” He whispers harshly. “I have a baseball bat and I kind of know how to use it.”

“Shit, sorry. It's just me, doofus.” She lifts her backpack off her shoulder, and drops it on the floor. "I brought _Heathers."_

“Bev? What are you doing here, is everything alright?” She scoffs, and laughs quietly.

“Oh yeah, peachy keen if I’m breaking into your house at 3 A.M. No, ding dong, I'm— I mean, like, I’m fine, but—”

“Get over here, Levvie.” He lifts his arm, and gestures to the bed. “C’mon, don't be shy, come cuddle with Richie from the Ditchie.”

“No room with Sleeping Beauty over there.”

“Oh.” Richie touches Eddie’s hand curled around his waist, almost like he forgot it was there, was so used to it. Eddie doesn't even stir, and Richie smiles softly. From the countless sleepovers the Losers have had over the past four years, Bev knows the only thing Eddie wakes from is the tinny sound of the alarm from his wristwatch. “Right. Well I'm up now, so come downstairs. I need hot chocolate if we're gonna talk.”

“No, Richie, really, I didn't mean to—”

But Richie’s already untangling his legs from Eddie's, climbing out of bed and pulling on a shirt from the floor. He looks around briefly for a pair of pants, but shrugs when he finds none comfortable enough and continues out the door in his boxers. Bev blushes and looks away sharply, embarrassed for no reason. She's seen Richie dressed in less at the Quarry, but for some reason, catching Richie and Eddie so… _ intimately together _ makes her skin crawl. She can't explain why. It's not that she's disgusted, it's more...

Inexplicably, she thinks of Samantha, wonders what she wears when she sleeps. She and Bev, for all their time spent together, have never had a sleepover. She’s had sleepovers with Mike, Bill, and Richie, but never Samantha. Just the thought makes her nervous. 

In the yellow light of the kitchen, Beverly can clearly see that Richie’s hair is askew and his mouth is bee-stung, kiss-bitten. The confusing feeling from before is gone, and is replaced with a little rush of a thrill. Someone she knows is just like her, at least a little bit. Richie Tozier, the guy who likes to crack jokes and pick fights because he thinks getting hit will knock whatever gets him wild loose enough to get rid of all together. Bev’s best friend is getting kissed by a _ boy. _A boy Bev knows and loves. It's exciting, the way any secret is. 

“So. Levvie.” Richie pulls his hot chocolate from the microwave 3 seconds before it dings. He sniffs, tastes it, and nods, satisfied. “We have that green tea you like. Is this a tea conversation or a chocolate one?”

“Tea,” Bev nods decisively. “Thanks.”

“‘Course.” Richie puts a mug of water in the microwave, and then turns with a grimace. “Sorry, I know it's sacrilege to do it this way, but the kettle will wake my parents.”

“It's cool,” Bev waves. “The microwave does alright in a pinch.”

“Faster, too.”

“Yeah.”

An awkward pause as the microwave hums. 

“So.”

“So.”

“You crawled through my window at,” he turns to the stove, then back again, “3:36 in the morning.”

“I did.”

“Usually that's my move, especially with the fact that my bedroom’s on the second floor.”

“The lattice works wonders.”

“I bet.”

“Yeah.” She sighs. “I would've called but, again, parents.”

"Right."

“I, uh,” she focuses on her cuticles, scrutinizing them as Richie takes the mug out of the microwave and goes searching for the tea bags. She sighs quietly. This was a bad idea. She didn't completely think this through, the whole crawling-into-her-best-friend’s-bedroom-in-the-middle-of-the-night thing. She just didn’t want to be alone, wanted to remember that there are men out there who don’t want to own her, who don’t treat her like a piece of property. She hadn’t wanted to actually _ talk _ about it. She never has any interest in talking about it, even with her therapist. The broad tried to convince Bev to _ act _ on her feelings for Sam, to _talk_ to her aunt about her dad. God for-fucking-bid.

So she doesn’t know exactly what to say. How to explain that she just wanted to feel safe for a night. “So, we don’t have to talk about it.” Bev breathes out. Thank god for Richie Tozier. “But we probably should.”

Nevermind. Fuck Richie Tozier.

“I have no interest.”

“Yes you do.”

“Fuck you! You don’t know me!”

“Okay, _ Eddie, _ maybe I don’t.”

“Creepy. Don’t call me Eddie when you just got out of bed with him. I ain’t that kind of party.” Richie just shrugs, unbothered by being called out about it. Bev wishes she could be like that, that unafraid. She can jump off cliffs like it’s nothing, but when faced with _ feelings? _ She runs. Hides. Can’t face the inevitable heat death of her own universe that would come with admitting to vulnerability.

“I had a nightmare.” Richie nods. Says nothing, for perhaps the first time in his entire life. Bev kind of wishes he would. Maybe that’s why he stays silent. Bitch. “About my dad.” Something dark passes over Richie’s face, but he still does nothing but nod. The brief anger that flits over his expression, unable to hide it, makes Bev feel a little safer; she’s angry too. “He used to lock me in the house. Sometimes didn’t let me go to school if he thought I was hanging out with boys. It got worse after the play, do you remember that? In third grade, with Bill.”

“I remember,” Richie responds hoarsely, like he’s being choked.

“Yeah. And when my mom died, he… he changed. He wasn’t always as bad as he got, but he was always just as possessive. He wanted my mom to stop working, wanted to homeschool me so I didn’t have to leave. My mom pushed for me to go to school, said it would be better for my development.” 

She sighs, frowns, thumbs at the mug and takes a sip. It’s not perfect—the water definitely tastes microwaved, she can always tell—but it’s familiar enough to convince her she’s safe. Her aunt turned her onto tea. It’s something she loves that doesn’t belong to her dad.

“I loved him, I think. That’s what sucks the most. He hurt me, but I still loved him. He was my dad, you know?”

“Bev,” Richie says, speaking slowly and quietly, measured like he’s trying his hardest to not crack a joke. Beverly is grateful. She doesn’t think she could handle a joke right now, even from Richie. “Loving your dad isn’t something you should have to feel guilty about. Everything he did to you, it was heinous. Abusive. Disgusting. But you’re allowed to still love him. You’re even allowed to miss him.”

“I don’t,” Bev refutes quickly. “I don’t miss him. I’m _ angry. _ I’m angry at my mom for offing herself and leaving me with him. I’m angry at my dad for thinking he had any right to do what he did to me. I’m angry at the teachers who should’ve reported my bruises and didn’t. I’m angry at Bill for not stepping in that summer, even though he was grieving and it wasn’t his job to. I’m angry at the clown for exacerbating all the horror I’d already experienced in spades. I’m just… I’m so fucking _ angry, _ Richie. All the time. It’s like it lives in me, helps me breathe, helps me live. I don’t ever want it to go away.”

“That’s good,” Richie says earnestly, nodding rapidly. “No, fuck that, that’s _ great. _ Anger is so much better than emptiness. Trust me.”

“You think?” Bev asks, cracking a smile for what feels like the first time in days. Unbidden, she flashes to a nightmare she had about Richie: him hanging from the rafters of Neibolt by his neck, a noose tied by his own hands. It felt more like a memory than a dream, even though Richie is standing right in front of her, alive and full of love. She feels tears finally start to well up.

“Nah. I know.”

She sniffs, nods, and moves to sit beside Richie, bringing her tea with her. She settles her head in the crook of his bony shoulder, and cups her mug with both hands. It says _ WONDER MOUNTAIN FUN PARK _ in bold, bright lettering on the side. She assumes that’s where Richie went for his 15th birthday. She was sad to miss it. She’s sad to miss any time she could’ve spent with Richie.

“Thanks,” she says quietly. It feels like an admission of something much bigger than the both of them.

“Anytime, Levvie.” He rests his cheek on her curls. Taking a sip from the tea, she finally feels like maybe there’s a place for her in the world that isn’t hazardous to her health. She loves her aunt, and she loves her friends, but she hates living in the same town as a sleeping, murderous clown, as her father’s bones, as the cruel kids who dumped garbage on her and acted like they owned her because they could lie about her promiscuity and people would believe them.

But Richie never believed those rumors, even if he joked about them. Bill didn’t, and Eddie didn’t, and Stan and Mike and Ben didn’t. Samantha didn’t. Her friends, her very favorite people, see her for who she truly is: just a girl who’s been hurt more often than she deserved and who wants nothing more than to make people happy.

Reaching out and tangling her fingers in Richie’s, she feels her identity finally start to diverge from the pain that's been living inside her for years. She’s more than the abuse she’s endured, more than the cruelty she’s seen. Beverly Marsh is _ brave. _ She’s _ blithesome. _ She’s _ bold _ and _ brash _ and _ ballistic. _ She’s _ benevolent. _ She is all these things, without her nightmares, without her therapist, without her diagnosis, without the fear that one day, she’ll lose all the things that make her real, and become what she always feared: _ owned. _ Owned by fear itself.

But sitting in Richie Tozier’s kitchen, with a mug of green tea in hand and Richie himself in her other, she feels like maybe fear itself can’t reach her if she’s armed with the knowledge that she’s stronger than what she’s afraid of. It’s hard to admit, but she _ does _ feel scared sometimes. _ Even the bravest people are allowed to be scared, _ her therapist told her a few months ago. _ It doesn’t erase their bravery. _ So maybe Bev can take the fear she feels and _ use _ it. Own it. Accept it.

Fear isn’t stronger than she knows she is. Fuck the clown. Fuck her dad. Fuck the bullies and fuck all the cruelty the world can muster. Bev’s gonna be better than that: Beverly Marsh is gonna be _ brave. _


	3. December, 1993

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i am literally writing this for myself but like. bev deserves her own story and i'm gonna fucking give it to her.

_You're like a party somebody threw me_  
_You taste like birthday_  
_You look like New Years_  
_You're like a big parade through town_  
_You leave such a mess but you're so fun_

—The Party, Regina Spektor

Beverly has gotten used to snowstorms at this point in her 17 years of living in Maine, but the first snowstorm of 1993 is worse than she’s ever experienced.

It’s both fortunate and unfortunate that she spends the brunt of it with Samantha Price.

Sam called her a week before, throwing tact out the window when she got Bev on the line and said, “You should come over on Tuesday before the storm. The Weather Channel says we’re gonna get 5 feet of snow, and I wanna see if it can bury you in it.” For some reason, Beverly is enamored with her, so she says, “Fine,” thus digging her own grave.

See, Bev has had a crush on Samantha from effectively from the moment she met her, which is exactly why she has introduced her to a grand total of zero of her other friends. Bev can just imagine how uncomfortable it would be for all involved. Ben, Mike, and Richie would definitely be able to tell Bev likes her, and would vary between awkward and hilariously obvious about it; Eddie would probably accidentally say something mean, and Sam would win a fistfight against him; Stan and Bill would stutter their way through small talk that would make Bev want to rip her hair from root. 

It just doesn’t make sense. Her boys, as much as she adores them all, would not mesh well with the glory of Samantha Price. The only one who _ might _ is Richie, but that can only happen if Bev ever gets her shit together and _ tells _ Sam, uh, anything about how she feels about her. Richie knows Bev too well; he’d be able to tell in an instant, and would _ not _ keep his mouth shut about it. She loves him to absolute death, but it’s a fact universally acknowledged that Richie Tozier’s mouth gets him into trouble, and things have been too precariously on the edge of _ something _ with Sam for too long; she can’t let Richie shove them into something they aren’t ready for yet.

But Beverly isn’t wholly prepared for what telling Sam she has feelings for her would entail. She’s terrified to run the probability charts, afraid of the proof that she really doesn’t know if Sam returns her romantic feelings. But worse than that, if Sam is—God forbid—homophobic, Bev isn’t totally sure she could withstand that. There’s no way for her to test the waters, no way to outright ask _ hey, do you happen to agree with the shit written on the Kissing Bridge about ‘fags burning in hell’? _ without looking like a freak of nature. 

Plus, on the off chance Sam _ does _ agree with it, she would have to stop talking to her, because as much as it pains her to say it, she’d do just about anything for Richie Tozier, and she takes very seriously that Richie and Eddie are out to their group of friends. She refuses to associate with anyone who would have the gall to hate either of them for it. She’s so impressed by their bravery, and she loves them, perhaps a bit too much.

But just like everyone else, Bev is a tiny bit selfish, and she’s terrified of what losing Samantha would do to her.

Bev _ loves _ having a female friend. It’s something she hasn’t ever been used to, spent so many years fearing men and women alike because men wanted to _ take _ from her until she was nothing but an empty shell, but women? Women wanted to cut her up until she was nothing but a bleeding mess of a girl, blood filling up her heart til she drowned in it. Girls were cruel to her, and she knew that. Girls were something to fear, just as men were. It broke her heart, but she stayed away from them.

Samantha is the first girl Beverly ever trusted enough to let in, and that’s a big deal for her. Bev is brave by nature, but she’s afraid to lose Sam. She tries not to fault herself for it. Oftentimes, it does not work.

So that’s why, after four years of friendship, Bev and Sam have never had a sleepover. She’s slept over with the Losers more times that she can count (much to the chagrin and confusion of her aunt) but the one female friend she has remained an elusive mystery after-hours.

However, December 16th, 1993 changes that for her.

She arrives at Sam’s modest two-story on the bus after school. She doesn’t tell Richie. She doesn’t tell Bill. The only person she tells is her aunt, because she had to if she wants her aunt to continue to trust her. It feels important, big and monumental like a secret should. It feels coveted the way any time spent with Samantha is, but consecrated like she felt when Richie and Eddie first told her they were gay. 

God. Even just _ thinking _ the word around Samantha is terrifying, thrilling, and thunderously wonderful. 

Sam’s house, shockingly, is bustling with life. As much as Bev counts upon stepping into the mud room, there's three kids, one boy a bit older than them, a younger boy, and a toddler whose gender is unreadable at the speed they're going; there's two cats, four dogs, and her mother who can be seen from the kitchen. “Come in, make sure not to let Hotdog out, he's been itching for an escape since I got home. He can sense the change in the weather. Oh hi!” She wipes her hand covered in flour on her apron and sticks it out for Bev to shake. “I'm Lisa, Sammy’s mom. You're Bev, yeah?”

“That's me. Nice to meet you, Miss Price.”

“Please,” Lisa waves, laughing and going back to her concoction, “just Lisa is fine, really. Sammy, if this whole making-a-pizza thing goes south by 5, come down and order something from Antonio’s. I don't want the poor pizza guy to be schlepping in the snow.”

“Will do,” Sam says, tucking a stray lock of her mom’s triangle-cut curls she keeps intermittently blowing out of her eyes. Lisa shoots her a grateful smile.

“It's your turn to do sweeping up, by the way.”

“Nah, I haggled it away to Tommy. He's gonna do it tonight and I get his turn next week on top of my own.”

Lisa laughs, big and broad, and the dog begging at her heels sits dutifully and awkwardly at the sound. Bev smiles, unable to help it. She has a loud laugh, too. “You kids and your haggling. For ages, Bev, Sammy was convinced she was going to be a poker star, though Lord knows where she expected to get big with that. Anywho, she taught all her siblings the rules, and they'd play for their chores. Eventually, they moved up to loose change. I banned poker from the house permanently after Lucas bartered his whole Bar Mitzvah savings away. I hope you're not into Poker, because you have to leave it at the door if you are.”

“I'm not,” Bev laughs, turning to Sam with raised brows. “I didn't know _ you _ were.”

“There's a lot you don't know about me, Marsh,” Sam smirks, a proud glint in her deep brown eyes that Bev isn't entirely certain ever goes away. She feels her insides take flight. “Stick around.”

“Make sure you get your homework done, girls,” Lisa warns as Sam walks out of the room, Bev and Hotdog hot on her heels.

“No school tomorrow, it's already closed due to inclement weather!” Sam calls back. 

“Do I care?” Sam’s church-bells laugh fills the stairwell, not even turning to make sure Bev is following her. She rounds the corner of the hallway and pulls up to a stop before opening the door, finally turning to face Bev. 

“Do you care if Hotdog comes in with us? He’ll whine at the door if he doesn't, but that can be easily ignored.”

“No, of course not, I love dogs. Hi, Hotdog!” Bev leans down for Hotdog to sniff at her hand. He resolutely ignores her, choosing to stare up at Sam instead. “Tough crowd.”

“He's a little shit,” Sam laughs, “isn't that right Hotdog? Yeah, you're a little shit, aren't you? Yes you are.” Hotdog starts whipping his tail back and forth violently, patting the wall with a _thwap thwap thwap._ Sam shrugs with a proud smile. “He loves me.”

“Can't see why,” Bev grins. Sam’s smile turns into a smirk. 

“Yeah, I bet.” She opens the door, Hotdog running in after her, Bev following with flaming cheeks. “Do you wanna watch a movie?”

“Sure,” Bev says, distracted by taking in her surroundings; she's never been inside Sam’s room before and it feels monumental to finally have the right to be here. Sam has posters all over her room; David Bowie, Radiohead, The Runaways, and the same Evil Dead poster Richie has up in his, which makes her smile. She hopes Richie gets snowed in with Eddie tonight. She thinks they’d probably have a blast with that.

“So our choices for movies are _ Friday the 13th, The Shining, Rear Window… Rebecca…” _

“Anything that _ isn’t _ horror?” Bev frowns, coming to look over Sam’s shoulder. She turns slightly, grinning, all teeth, nothing monstrous.

“No.”

Bev laughs, slapping her lightly on the shoulder. “You’re just like Richie.”

“Richie… Tozier? He’s your friend, right?”

“Best friend,” Bev agrees. She squints at Sam, suddenly terrified of her reaction. She supposes she couldn’t keep work and play separate forever. “You… Do you know him?”

“Yeah, a bit, he was in my Bio class last year. Class clown.” She smiles up at Bev, squinting back seemingly playfully. The smirk is gone. She looks… normal. Stereotypically Sam. “I like him. Kid’s got jokes. Good choice for a best friend, I think.” Bev feels a little piece of herself that had been tightening up in her chest unravel. 

_ “Rear Window’s _ good for me.”

Sam’s smile widens. “Girl’s got taste.”

Piled together on Sam’s bed, Bev feels both wholly safe and exhilarated in a way she never has before. She’s absolutely _ not _ paying attention to the Hitchcock movie playing on Sam’s 13-inch screen. She can feel every point of contact where her body touches Sam’s in visceral, burning technicolor. It’s horrifying; it’s exhilarating; it’s _ wonderful. _

“Hey, Sam?” Bev hedges, her breath against Sam’s shoulder when she turns. Sam hums, still distracted by the movie. Here, basking in romance, Bev feels safe enough to ask, “Would you… would you like it if I kissed you?”

Sam turns her head slowly, and Bev watches as a beautiful smile blooms on her face. “Yeah, Bev, I would.”

Bev mirrors her smile, sighs softly, “Good. I always hoped so.”

“Always, eh?” Sam’s earnestness turns teasing in an instant, eyes sharp, but not enough to cut herself on. There’s no bleeding around Samantha Price. “How long is always?”

Bev grumbles, no real words coming out, and ducks her head so Sam can’t see her blush. But Sam won’t have that, and touches two fingers beneath Bev’s chin and tilts her head up to look at her. The sharpness in her eyes is gone, and Bev feels her stomach hitch and free-fall when she sees Sam’s eyes are liquid instead.

Sam tilts her head down, mouth ghosting over Bev’s, and Bev feels suddenly emboldened, like maybe she was always this brave, and captures Sam’s mouth in a kiss.

It’s nothing like her kiss in third grade with Bill. There’s nothing in this that tastes like childhood; Sam’s mouth tastes like cherry Chapstick and hope. It feels like a real, Hollywood kiss. But then Sam shifts, smiles into her mouth, touches Bev's cheek, and she's thrown out of the TV world she was living in for a moment. This is _real._ This is everything Bev has wanted since she met Samantha in 1989. Bev has never experienced a feeling like this before in her life. It’s terrifying. It’s breathtaking. It’s _ wonderful. _

Bev pulls away when she realizes she’s getting lightheaded and needs to catch her breath, and laughs at nothing when she looks out the window.

“What?” Sam smiles.

“Look,” Bev says, pointing, “it’s snowing.” Sam turns, laughs too, and rests her head against Bev’s chest.

“Looks like the world is glad you asked that, too.”

“Cheeseball,” Bev grins, adjusting so her back is against Sam’s headboard, and pulls Sam up with her.

“Not on your life,” Sam swears, tilting her head up to glare at Bev.

Bev laughs. She feels lighter than she ever has before. This million-pound secret she’s been harboring since she met Samantha is suddenly gone. She feels like her albatross has lifted. She’s free. She’s not alone. She’s safe, no matter if Sam ever wants to kiss her again or not. Bev doesn’t think she needs to. This is all she wanted; to be free from the heavy burden of secrecy. To be heart-wrenchingly, blood-poundingly, breath-stealingly _alive. _

And here, with Sam, with the taste of cherry Chapstick still on her lips, she is.


	4. February, 1994

_It turns out hell will not be found_   
_ Within the fires below_   
_ But in making do and muddling through  
When you've nowhere else to go_

_But then I remember you_   
_ And the way you shine like truth in all you do_   
_ And if you remember me  
You could save me from the way I tend to be_

—The Way I Tend to Be, Frank Turner

Bev and Eddie don’t really hang out very much on their own.

Richie is Beverly’s best friend, and Richie is Eddie’s boyfriend (probably? Who even knows anymore, but she’s pretty much certain that’s what they are to each other—or at least, she hopes, because it will make everyone’s lives easier if they just stop pussyfooting around it), and they share the same group of friends, but that’s mostly been where the intersection between Bev and Eddie starts and stops. Sometimes, just the three of them hang out, but they’re always _ doing something; _ planting a cherry bomb in the gym teacher’s mailbox for continuing to be cruel to Ben even _ after _ they TPed his yard, or egging Stan’s neighbor’s house because Bev heard them spouting antisemitic bullshit, or lighting fireworks off at the quarry. Okay, _ doing something scandalous _ is probably more descriptive.

Eddie really only does scandalous things with Richie, or with Beverly _ and _ Richie, so she always assumed the dynamic with just the two of them would be just as explosive.

It isn’t. It’s something else entirely.

It only happens by accident. They’re both waiting for Richie at his house while he finishes tutoring Bill in Chemistry. Maggie Tozier is home, but she’s upstairs in her study neck-deep in an arbitration agreement for… ownership of a gas station? Maybe? Bev doesn’t know, she hadn’t been paying much attention when she came down, kissed both their cheeks hello and ordered them a pizza before hurrying back upstairs.

Now it’s just Beverly and Eddie, who have never hung out before outside of Richie or the group at large except for the few times when they were younger and they practiced hugging. That was pretty awkward, but that was the nature of the experiment anyway. They were uncomfortable due to a half-shared, half-similar trauma. But in the years since Alvin Marsh was carted away from their old apartment by the Kissing Bridge in a body bag and buried in the graveyard that Beverly has never step foot in (and hopefully never will), she’s found that she's been able to… not _ move on, _ per say. But cope.

Better than Eddie seems to, at least. And it makes sense; he still has to live with his miserable mother, needing to sneak in and out of the house like some sort of goblin just to hang out with them considering Mrs. Kaspbrak doesn't hide her distaste for them. Beverly remembers her goblin-sneaking years. They weren’t good years.

She can tell Eddie expects it to be awkward; friendly, but forced. What he clearly does not expect is for Beverly to dive right into the deep end, which is exactly why she does it. Too many people tip-toe around Eddie’s feelings, even Richie, and she can see it in his eyes that he hates it. He’s not delicate or broken—he proved that inarguably in the sewers, dragging them down the pipes with only a flashlight and his bravery to propel him forward. There were times when Bev was certain that Bill was their fearless leader that summer, but then Eddie would get galactic vomit spewed on him and _ still _ fight back like a caged dog who’s finally been set free.

Eddie is not anywhere near as breakable as the world treats him, and if there’s one thing Beverly Marsh refuses to do any longer, it’s hide.

“So the inhaler,” she starts from the opposite end of the kitchen, cocking her head towards his hips where his fanny pack used to rest. “It’s a placebo, huh?”

“Uh. Yeah,” hedges Eddie, eyes downcast as he methodically picks at the skin around his fingernails. He’d clearly forgotten to moisturize today, and he’s paying for it dearly with the obsessive picking he’s doing. Bev doesn’t remember where Rich keeps his hand lotion, but knowing him, she’s not certain she even wants to find out, so she figures it’s fine if he picks for a little while. He’s not gonna fucking bleed to death.

“I, uh, I have anxiety,” Eddie says, sounding like he’s attempting to explain himself in a language he doesn’t speak. “You know about Bill’s grief counselor?” Beverly just hums; she and Bill pass each other in the waiting room every Sunday afternoon. “Uh, he paid for me to have a session with her and that's what she told me. I mean, I always _ kind of _ knew, but I kind of didn’t at the same time, you know?”

“I do,” Bev says. “That was really nice of Bill to do that for you.” She feels a little guilty that she’s surprised by that. After all Bill did for her—for all of them—she feels like it’s a disservice to him to be shocked by his relentless kindness.

“Yeah.” He points to Bev’s head. “Your, uh. I like your hair.” He gestures to Beverly’s grown-out curls, stopping just past her armpits, going so far as to wave his hand around his own head. Bev frowns as she looks over at her reflection in the microwave. She watches her own expression darken.

“I don’t,” is all she says. Eddie doesn’t respond as Bev prods at her own head, a little violently, trying to pile it all on top of her head without a hair tie. _ Not yet, _ she spits at herself, _ you're not ready for it to be back to how it was just yet. How weak. How pathetic. _

She knows Eddie probably feels uncomfortable—or even, as he just divulged, anxious—as a result of this half-conversation with an oddly serious tone. But when she turns to face him, holding her hair up and striking a pose with a sultry, “How do I look, stud?” the ease in which he bursts out laughing can’t be denied. There’s something about being here in Richie’s house that calms her nerves, and probably Eddie’s as well. She supposes it doesn’t matter what she and Eddie are discussing, or that they don’t hang out alone often, so long as this is the place they're doing it at. 

She doesn’t really know why that is. Maybe it’s Mrs. K’s doing, or maybe it’s Eddie’s own choice, or perhaps he’s one of the many who have been pushed away by Beverly’s demeanor. This isn’t how she normally feels in this house—with Richie, wild and free. It’s something new, something different, something she never thought she’d achieve in the presence of a man. Something almost resembling comfort. Safety. Something that could look to the untrained eye like family.

Out of nowhere, Eddie blurts out, “Do you want to get rid of it? Like you did a few summers ago?”

Eddie winces at his tactlessness, no doubt expecting the mention of the summer they met to darken their tenuously comfortable mood. Instead, Beverly’s gaze intensifies as she turns one more to stare herself down in the reflection of the stove. She lets her hair fall back where it was, and flinches as she feels it touch the skin of her shoulder. She hopes one day her own hair doesn’t feel like her father’s skin. Today is not that day. 

She nods at her reflection and then twists back around to face Eddie.

“I do.” She breezes past Eddie and starts walking towards the stairs.

“Oh, you meant, like, right now?” Eddie rushes to follow her, stumbling over where the linoleum dips to meet the shag carpet in the living room. She doesn’t even turn around to make sure he’s okay; Eddie can take care of himself. “Okay, yeah, sure.” By the time she gets to the first step of the staircase, Beverly stops short and turns to look down at Eddie who’s standing on the landing with wide eyes.

“We’re not at my house,” she says.

“No duh,” Eddie responds.

“No, I mean, I don’t know where any of the haircutting shit is here.”

“Sure you do!” Eddie smiles, bouncing on his toes, glad to be helpful. He gestures wildly, hands flying towards the staircase. “Richie told me you cut his hair sometimes because every part of him won't stop growing like a fuckin’ weed. Do you do that at your aunt’s place, or—?”

“You’re _ right,” _ Beverly grins, snapping her fingers and pointing at Eddie, “I’ve done it here a few times, I totally know where it is. Come on.” She grabs Eddie hand and hauls him up the stairs, taking them two at a time in her haste just like Richie does. Eddie’s smiling by the time they make it all the way up. They go past Maggie’s study, pop their heads in to let her know what they’re doing, and she just waves a thumbs-up at them, unable to pull herself out of the huge book on her desk. Eddie tells her to make sure to come up for air every now and then, and she _ yeah yeah yeahs _ them out of them room.

They’re laughing when they enter the bathroom, and the two of them get right to work, Beverly pulling out the plastic bag filled with hair cutting supplies the Toziers keep in their closet, and hops up onto the counter. 

“Uh,” Eddie frowns, “I'm too — I mean, I'm not as tall as Richie. Can't reach you up there.” He walks over to the toilet and flips the lid down, then gestures dramatically. “Your carriage awaits, m’lady.”

She giggles, mimes curtseying in the overalls she's wearing, and sits. Eddie pulls the plastic cover around Bev’s front, asks, “How short you want it?”

“Do you remember that summer? When I first cut it? That short. Off my shoulders completely.”

“I… Yeah, I’m sure I can do that.” He doesn’t sound sure. Bev frowns.

“You good back there, Kaspbrak?”

“Yeah. I’m good. Sorry if it isn't, like, perfect.” 

“No biggie.”

“Cool.”And then he gets to work. “Thanks.”

“For what?” _ Snip. Snip snip. _

“For…” _ Snip snip snip. _ “Trusting me, I guess.”

Silence pulls over them, taut and frayed. Bev thinks about the last time she trusted a man who wasn’t Richie. She can’t think of any. Maybe Bill during that one horrible summer, but she and Bill barely talk anymore unless they’re in the group. Same with Eddie, or so she thought. “Sure,” Bev settles for eventually. She shrugs minutely, trying not to disrupt Eddie’s work. “We’re friends.”

“No, I know that, it’s just… Well, you don’t trust very many people.”

“What are you saying, Kaspbrak?” She snaps. Frowns. The moment frays again.

“That came out wrong. Really wrong. Sorry, I… Sorry.” _ Snip. _ He sighs, pauses. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I don't know very much about how bad things were with your… whatever, I just know that you don't let a lot of people in. Not a bad thing, just a… thing. I'm gonna stop talking now. Okay.”

“It's cool, Eddie. You're sort of right anyway.” She continues looking forward towards the window above the toilet. She doesn't look Eddie in the eye because it isn't necessary. She isn't angry. Beverly is rarely angry, not anymore, not without any reason to be. “Really, it's cool. Promise.”

“‘Kay.”

_ Snip snip. _ It's quiet for a while, and Beverly gets lost in the relief of her hair falling to the tile beneath her. She doesn't remember the last time she felt this safe. Maybe when Bill Denbrough hugged her in his garage. Maybe when Richie Tozier looked up at her with Lucky in his lap and grinned. Maybe when Sammy Price asked her to come over after school right in front of Greta Bowie. 

Maybe Beverly Marsh feels safe more often than her past would lead her to believe. 

She feels safe enough to come clean, at least a little, and asks,

“Eddie…” But then her jaw clicks shut. Eddie doesn’t push her to continue, but she does so voluntarily. _ Snip. _Her shoulders feel infinitely lighter without the few ounces the strenuous weight of her hair put her under. “How did you know you were gay?”

“I’m not,” Eddie responds immediately, knee-jerk. “I'm not gay.” Bev flinches.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to assume.”

“I just don’t like that word. I don’t… really like any words. I wish I could just be a formless, identity-less blob.”

“That isn’t really the world we live in.”

“I know.” _ Snip snip. Snip. Snip snip. _ Pause. “I really, _ really _ don’t like that word. But I guess that’s because it got tainted for me by the cruelty of the world. I guess it’s probably the best word for what I am. Anyway, you asked how I knew. I still kind of don’t.” _ Snip. _ Pause. _ Snip snip. _ Bev tries her hardest to keep her breathing even and measured so Eddie doesn’t work himself into a panic attack. She hopes it does anything for him. “It’s hard to explain. Me and Richie, we’re something I can’t exactly… it just makes more sense, for us to be like this. How we are now. It was easier just to give into it. An inevitability, you know?”

She smiles. _ Snip snip. _ She thinks of Sammy Price, and what kissing her means to her. How it feels to have a secret that the world around her would hate her for. Smiles wider. “Yeah, I think I get what you mean.”

“So, yeah. My… sexuality, or whatever, is almost separate from what I have with Richie. Like, it matters, but at the same time, it doesn't. I’m at my most normal around Richie, and I don't want to stress myself out more than I have to, if that makes sense. Like, I'm stressed enough just existing. I don’t want to worry myself about labels because what's the point? Gay, straight, whatever. I'm with Richie ‘til the end regardless of what I feel comfortable calling myself.”

“You don’t _ want _ to call yourself something,” Bev says, trying for kind. “But you do anyway. Everyone does.”

_ Snip snip. _ Pause. _ Snip. _ “Yeah, I know.” Pause. Eddie steadies his breathing. He sets the scissors down on the tub and sits beside them. He puts his head in his hands.

“I didn’t mean to break your brain, Eddie,” Bev says, frowning. “Are you… I mean, are you good?”

“Yeah,” he responds without thinking. He laughs shrilly. The sound bounces off the porcelain and cuts against her skin. She winces. “Peachy-keen.”

“Yeah…”

He runs his fingers through his hair rhythmically, back and forth. “I don’t like the word gay.”

“Okay.”

“But I think I am.”

Beverly smiles. “That’s okay, too.”

“Yeah.” Eddie looks up, and smiles back at her.

“Okay.” He nods decisively and goes back to cutting her hair.

She chalks it up to being in Richie’s house, the reason his teasing spirit briefly possesses her. “Your boyfriend know about this?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Eddie snaps, angry over nothing, but Bev knows this game a bit better. She’s not thrown off by Kaspbrak’s defensiveness. She knows he isn’t angry at her, just himself. And maybe a little bit Richie. But everyone’s always a little bit angry at Richie—even her.

“Sure, okay, and I’m seven feet tall.”

“He’s _ not. _ We’re just dating.”

“Oh, and that’s different?”

“Whatever. I’m done talking about this.”

“I’m not. I really think you should talk to him—”

“It’s coming out really nice,” Eddie cuts in, strained. “Your hair, I mean. Not… I mean, not me. I'm not. Coming out, that is.”

“You’re a mess, Kaspbrak.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Did you know it’s been a year since Richie and I started dating?”

“Why the fuck would I know that?” Beverly snorts. “I barely knew you were dating in the first place.”

“Fuck off,” he scoffs, stabbing her lightly in the shoulder with the points of the scissors. Beverly squeaks, jumps, so on edge at all times, especially around any man (God, she wishes she could get past that one, especially considering six out of seven of her friends _ are _ men). But then Eddie soothes the barely-there bite with a kind hand to the place he just poked her, a wordless apology, and Beverly feels a little silly for ever considering Eddie to be just one of the guys. He continues on after that at a breakneck pace, still chopping at her hair like the previous interaction never happened, and it makes Beverly have to hold back a laugh. 

“Am I supposed to get him a gift? For our anniversary. I feel like I should, but if I get him one and he doesn’t get _ me _ one, I’m gonna look like a fuckin’ toolbag. But then if he gets _ me _ one and I didn’t get _ him _ one, it’ll seem like I don’t like him or something, which is _ ridiculous, _ because I—you know, I—”

“Christ, Kaspbrak, slow your fuckin’ roll.”

He breathes, a little unsteady. She hopes he doesn’t need to use his inhaler. She always feels bad whenever he whips it out. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, a gift might be nice. Any ideas?”

“Well, he's really into his Gameboy right now, but that feels too impersonal. I was thinking nail polish, because he’s always stealing yours and Maggie’s, but that feels too small.”

“I, for one, would be _ grateful _ if you gave him nail polish. He stole my favorite one, that garnet one.”

“I'll steal it back for you. Hold on.” He leaves the room, and Beverly shifts awkwardly until he comes bustling back in, full of life, filling up the room. “He _ hid it. _What a dick. Here.” He sets it down on the back of the toilet. “Enjoy.”

“I will. What about jewelry?” 

“Oh,” Eddie breathes, his hands poised above her head. “That… That might be nice. Do you think he'd wear it?”

“He'd wear anything you gave him with pride, Eds.”

“Yeah?” There's a smile clear in his voice, small and a little embarrassed. Bev smiles back.

“Totally.”

“Okay. I'll ask Mike where he got that chain he wears, the one with the little charm hanging off. Richie’s always mooning over that.”

“Good idea.”

“Okay.” _ Snip. Snip. _ “And…” _ Snip. _ “Done. Go take a look.”

They do a little dance trying to navigate in the tiny bathroom, and then Bev’s in front of the mirror. She looks… good. Right. The way she wants to look. The way she hopes one day she doesn’t _ need _ to look. “Eddie, it’s gorgeous. I love it.” She turns to him and wiggles her fingers out in front of her, pulling Eddie in for a hug. It feels like shrugging on her old skin. She hasn’t hugged Eddie since 1991. She hadn’t even realized it’d been that long until he’s already in her arms. She collapses into him, trusts him to hold her up. 

“Thanks, Eds.”

“Welcome, Bevs.” She smiles and tucks her face into the crook of Eddie’s neck. Her hair falls over her forehead, lightly brushing the top of Eddie’s shoulder. She feels back to stasis. She feels back to safe.

The doorbell echoes throughout the house, Bev hears Maggie yell, “Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!” So Bev and Eddie make their way downstairs, laughing the whole way, angled into each other.

When they rip open the doorway, giggling into each other’s shoulders, they don’t find the pizza boy, but instead, Richie, leaning against his own door frame in a sleaziest way possible, one thumb hooked into the belt loop of his jeans, balancing the pizza box with the other hand, all hooded eyes and husky voice. Beverly scoffs and rolls her eyes. She knows this show isn't for her.

“How much for just the tip?”

“Fuck off, Richard,” Eddie snaps as he snatches the pizza from him and Beverly pulls him inside by his shirt collar. “That barely makes any sense.”

“Aw, c’mon, Eds, you wound me!” Richie whines, dragging his feet like a wet dog. “I workshopped like fifteen of those waiting for you assholes to open the door! I paid for the pizza and everything!”

“We were busy,” Bev says, twirling in place in a tight circle and framing her face with her hands. “How’d Mr. Kaspbrak do?”

“He did _ stellar!” _ Richie shouts, dropping the pizza onto the couch with a loud _ fwap! _ and rushing up to delicately finger her curls. He mimes cutting her hair with two fingers, his hand flying around her head, and Bev smiles. She realizes she doesn't remember the last time a man’s hands were in her hair without feeling abject fear. She isn't scared. She trusts Richie not to hurt her. 

His expression quickly drops into a dramatic pout. “I guess you don’t trust your best friend with a pair of scissors, huh?”

“I mean, no,” Bev grins, hooking her thumb and pointing it at Eddie, “I trust Eddie not to slice me way more than you.”

Richie gasps, affronted, “I would _ never!” _

“Not on _ purpose.” _ Eddie calls from where he’s doling out pizza in the kitchen, “Mags! Richie and also pizza are home! Do you want any of either?”

“I want both, but if I don’t get this mailed out by tomorrow morning, my boss will have my head,” Maggie shouts back from upstairs, muffled. “Can you bring me them?”

Eddie shoves a plate of pizza at Richie and points to the stairs. “Don’t eat it on the way up. That’s for your mother and your mother only.”

“Oooh, bossy,” Richie grins, gummy and bright-eyed as he leans in close enough to kiss Eddie. He doesn't; the blinds in the living room are wide open, and Bev feels her heart rate spike at the sight. She wishes her friends could feel safe in the light. She wishes the same for herself. She shuffles so she’s standing in between her friends and the window, a protective barrier, because if she can’t find safety, at least she can provide some for her friends. “I like this side of you. We should incorporate it more.” Beverly averts her eyes with a smile.

“Richard,” Eddie hisses, eyes darting wildly, “not in front of the kids.”

“Oh, Bev’s not a kid!” Richie laughs, sailing over to toss his arm around Beverly’s shoulders. “She’s got a dirtier mind than _ me, _ don’t let this cool exterior fool you!”

“I’m afraid he’s right,” Beverly sighs, winding her arm around Richie’s waist and roughly pinching his side until he crumbles in on himself, whining loudly. “We just can’t be cleaned up. It’s a tragedy, really.”

“What a shame,” Eddie grins. And it’s nice, Bev thinks, that there’s at least one place in all of Derry she and her friends can feel safe in. 

But then she thinks on it as Eddie sets the table for them, and realizes that she’s felt safe in Derry before. One: the Tozier house, two: the clubhouse, three: the Barrens, four: Sam’s house. She’s been so used to feeling unsafe for so long that she’s been ready to fight for years. A coiled spring, a punching bag, ivy curling around the edges of safety but never quite planting herself in it.

But steadily, without her ever really noticing, she’s made a home in these people, she’s carefully crafted safety in the notches of her friends’ spines. She’s rooted herself here, and she doesn’t really regret it. She still can’t wait to leave, can’t wait to leave Derry in the rearview mirror; but maybe, just maybe, she can take the notches of this safety with her when she does.


	5. May, 1994

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings in the end notes! love y'all

_ At seventeen, I started to starve myself_   
_ I thought that love was a kind of emptiness_   
_ And at least I understood then the hunger I felt_   
_ And I didn't have to call it loneliness_   
_We all have a hunger_

—Hunger, Florence and the Machine

When Beverly meets up with Samantha Price one nice evening in May, she goes into it knowing something major is going to have to change.

Prom was a fucking blast (even with Eddie going off the rails halfway through and getting way more drunk than any of them were expecting), but Bev knows that Sam meeting the Losers is as close to meeting the folks as it gets with her, and that means they need to talk about where they stand.

So a week and a half after prom, on a breezy, cool Spring day at 5:30 PM, Sam calls Bev and asks her to meet her in the park at the bench near the Paul Bunyan statue. Sam’s already waiting there when Bev walks up, hands tucked neatly in the pockets of her dungarees and praying that Sam wants to have the same conversation as she does.

See, Bev likes Sam. A lot. A whole hell of a fucking lot. But she doesn’t _ love _ her, doesn’t _ need _ her the same way that Richie and Eddie love and need each other. The Losers’ Club are the closest thing Bev has to a family aside from her aunt, and Richie and Eddie are the two people in that family that share romantic love, her only real model for a functional relationship that she’s ever had outside of _ Mad About You. _ The way Richie and Eddie love each other is all-consuming, blazing hot and blistering, but also the aloe that heals the burns and the love they come home to at the end of the day. They hate each other just a little bit and love each other a whole fucking lot, and Bev knows that isn’t how she loves, but she knows that same endless passion goes hand in hand with what she wants, and that’s just not how she feels with Sam.

There’s no passion. She _ likes _ Sam, for absolute fucking sure, but she doesn’t _ love _ her.

So when Sam asks Bev with uncharacteristically quiet insistence, "Did you have fun at the prom? With… me?” Bev is thrown for a loop. She doesn’t know what to say. She stares, and stares, and stares. Sammy’s endless brown eyes look liquid in the twilight descending onto them and making this moment feel even more important than it did before. 

“Yeah, Sammy. ‘Course I did.” Sam nods silently. But she looks so disappointed, unable to make eye contact anymore, like maybe she'd gotten her hopes up and Bev dashed them, looking less and less like the Thunderbird Bev fell for. Bev can’t take it. “Sorry you had to ask. I had a great time.”

Sam’s head snaps up and her eyes widen. Bev smiles crookedly at the sight. “Really?”

“What, the big, bad Sammy Price not expecting that?” Bev winks, just the flutter of one eyelid, and Sam looks a little starstruck. Damn, that feels good to see. Makes her think, _ Man, I could learn to love this girl, if I had the time to. _

“Honestly? No. I thought…” She shakes her head slightly, marveling at her. “Bev… Why won’t you kiss me?”

Bev startles, eyes widening the way Sam’s just did, but there’s no smiling this time. Her voice lowers so it doesn’t carry around the deserted park, and says, “I do kiss you. I kiss you as much as is safe.”

“I know, I just… I wish you would _ really _ kiss me. Like you can’t help but not.” Beverly blinks, stunned. She thought Sam liked the chasteness Bev feels comfortable with. She hadn’t even thought to ask. She assumed they were on the same page. “Here, come down. Let’s sit together.”

Bev launches herself onto the ground, tumbling safely, taking a page out of Richie’s book to break weird and strange moments pulled taut with nerves with humor, and rights herself as Sam laughs. She tucks Bev’s head into the crook of her shoulder when she settles, and she knows they look platonic, but startles when she realizes they _ feel _ platonic, too. “I’m sorry,” Bev says eventually. “It’s just all I feel comfortable with.”

“Hey. Don’t you ever apologize to me. You did nothing wrong,” Sam stresses, sounding more serious than Bev has ever heard her. Perhaps Richie’s page didn’t work as well as she’d hoped it would. “You hear me, Bev? I want you to feel safe with me, and if the kissing we do is all you feel safe with, then I’m happy to do it.”

“Okay,” Bev whispers. She’s waiting for the _ but. _ Sam sighs, and Bev readies herself for combat. But the _ but _ never comes. Sam dances her fingers up and down Beverly’s arm, and whatever fight was left inside her drains out. She doesn’t have to be a soldier with Sam. Her fingers sail down and tangle themselves with Bev’s. Bev adjusts, tucking her knees up to her chest.

“Do you think we’ll stay together?” Bev asks in a whisper, her head upon Sam’s chest, her steadily beating heart pressed up against Bev's ear, the safest sound she knows aside from Richie's laugh, “After high school, do you think we’ll be together?” And she’s asked the question, but she already knows the answer. 

“No,” Sam hums, still toying with Bev’s fingers, “but do we need to be?” Bev’s throat works around words she can’t let escape. The silence feels oppressive. “Being with you was the best way I could've ever spent my years in Derry, Beverly, and I'm going to cherish it forever. But it wouldn't be fair to either of us to drag this out. I'm going to Seattle, and I'm going to be miles away from Derry, and so happy. And you're going to be the same in New York. I'm always gonna hold a candle for you, Bev, because I'm always gonna think of you as the only piece of Derry worth loving.”

Bev breathes in, and breathes out. She isn't crying. She isn't scared. This doesn't feel like a break up. This feels like the most natural conversation to have in the world. Samantha can make the hardest conversations feel easy as pie, right as rain. Bev will miss that. She realizes distantly that this is the first time Sam has ever said she loves her. “I'll miss you,” she says, and hopes it sounds a lot like _ I could’ve loved you if we had just had more time. _

“No you won't. You won't miss Derry.”

“But you're not Derry,” Bev smiles.

“Aye, so I’m not.”

And then they hear _ beep beep _ from down the road, and Sam looks to the street curling around the edges of the park and nods, holding up a finger. “That’s my mom.”

“Okay.”

“Are we… I…” Sam shakes her head. “You know how much I’ve loved being your friend, Bev. You _ do _ know that, right?”

“I’ve loved being your friend, too, Sam.”

She smiles down at Bev, and leans down to press a kiss to her forehead. Bev closes her eyes, and tries to feel safe in her skin. Tries not to feel lonely with Samantha standing right in front of her. “Bye, Bevs.”

“Bye, Sammy.”

And then, just as quickly as she tore through Bev’s life, Samantha Price is gone. Body numb, Beverly starts to walk home, but before she can even process the conversation she just had, a car pulls up beside her, idling, something evil snarling under the hood. 

“Hey, pretty lady,” the guy in the driver’s seat drawls, “where you headed?” The hair on the back of Bev’s neck stands on end, but she doesn’t reply. A snort comes from inside the car. “What, your daddy didn't teach you to respond to a man when spoken to? I asked where you're goin'.”

“C’mon, Lassie, speak! Ruff!” Someone laughs. Bev’s stomach rolls. She still doesn't look to the men in the car. She looks around, cataloguing where she is and whose house is closest. 

“I'm walking to my boyfriend’s house,” she says, biding her time as she tries to figure out where she can go that isn’t her house so these pricks don’t know where she lives. _ Bill’s over on Witcham… Ben’s old house is nearby, but the people who moved in are a little skeevy... _

“Aw!” The first man coos, smacking his lips together. Bev glances at the car. The men are in their forties and much, much bigger than Bev in their pick-up truck. _It’s getting dark out. Stan’s caddy-cornered between Neibolt and Spring... _ “Someone got to you first, jailbait? I'm jealous.”

“Sure did,” she says as mildly as she can manage. _ Richie! _ She skids on her heels, turning down Richie’s street, and the men in the car follow. She's furious that the only chance she has at getting these guys to leave her alone is telling them another man got to her first. She feels nauseous. She feels red-hot with anger. She can express none of this. 

“Whatever, Roy,” another guy says, “this prude ain't worth it.”

“Lemme know if your boyfriend don't fuck you good tonight, sugar. Bet I can fuck you better.” And then they burn rubber, peeling away from her and speeding down the street. Bev turns into Richie’s driveway, finally allowing herself to breathe as quickly as she wanted to before. She knocks, almost in a dream, only feeling her breath. She doesn’t feel real. She feels like a star child, not from this world, completely numb to all the evil it has to offer after all the evil she’s seen from it. 

Richie’s dad answers the door, and at the sight of his stature—tall and demanding, nothing like Richie’s lanky, forgiving frame—she flinches. “Hey, Beverly,” Mr. Tozier says quietly, nothing like his broad shoulders, closing the door slightly so the noise from inside doesn't carry. Bev can still hear Richie’s boisterous laugh echo and push its way off the walls and into her heart as Mrs. Tozier scolds him lightly around a chuckle. It's the first time she feels truly herself since Sam asked her why she doesn't kiss her. “Is everything okay?”

“Is Richie here?” 

She feels dumb with nerves. Both of them can hear Richie from inside, but he still says, “Sure, Bev. You wanna come in?”

“Yes please,” she sniffs, realizing for the first time that she's crying. 

“Come in,” Mr. Tozier says, voice hushed as he ushers her inside and it doesn't sound even a little bit abrasive. "You know you're always safe here, right?" And Bev nods, because she does know that. He's maybe the only grown man in the entire town Bev doesn't actively fear, yet she's still shaking like a leaf. She curses internally, blaming herself for worrying Mr. Tozier. “Eddie's here too, is that alright?”

“Yeah,” Bev says, voice thick, “course.”

“Okay. I'm gonna go get him. Mags, make Bev some tea?”

“So demanding,” Mrs. Tozier says, rolling her eyes affectionately from the kitchen. Bev stands in the foyer awkwardly, not knowing what to do with her hands, with her arms, with her body, with her nerves. “Green tea, right, Bev?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” She relaxes a modicum, being alone in the room with Maggie Tozier. She's always been so fiercely protective of her family. Bev loves fierce girls and women; they're easy to emulate and easy to love. 

“Tozier Residence?” Richie says down the hallway, halfway through a laugh. Bev goes to respond, and finds she can't. She's paralyzed. She never thought she’d be this scared to live again. Fuck those men for following her home. Fuck New York for being so far from Seattle. Fuck everyone. Fuck everything. 

“That's for the phone,” Eddie quips from the living room. 

“Shut up, you little gremlin!” Richie laughs, stopping short right outside the kitchen, just out of Bev’s line of sight. “Helloooo, this is Richie Trashmouth Tozier on the line, who do I have the pleasure of speaking to on this fine evening?”

“Hi,” Bev manages. 

“Bevvie from the Levvie!” Richie smiles, jumping into the kitchen with jazz hands, grinning madly. “Hello, my love. To what do I owe the honor of this house call?”

“Where’s Eddie?” She asks, proud of how stable she sounds. 

“He’s coming, finishing watching Jeopardy with my dad. It's the Tournament of Champions and they're really rooting for this one dude, I forget his name. I'm just happy because I got a 1000 dollar question. I’m rich now. Eds is looking pretty as a peach today, might I add. Are you ditching me for him?”

“No.” Silence. Richie shifts awkwardly. 

“Are you… I mean, are you good? Is everything kosher?”

“Not really.” She pauses. Sighs. Maggie puts Bev's tea on the kitchen table and leaves the room with an affectionate squeeze to Bev's right shoulder. She's grateful. Without any adults in the room, she's finally able to speak. “Well, sort of. Ditchie?”

“Levvie?”

“I think I broke up with Samantha Price who might've not actually been my girlfriend in the first place. And I got followed here by these real fucking creeps, so I'm… I just… need you.” She winces at the wording. Fuck, she hates needing anyone. It feels wrong. She feels all wrong. All she wants is to be safe in the world. She's furious that she can't feel safe without help. 

“Oh. Oh no. This is no joking matter.”

“Not really.”

“Okay. Hold on.” Then, poking his head into the living room. “Eds? Bev needs me."

"Is she—?"

"Yeah, she's okay. I swear.” Richie makes an aborted movement, reaching out for Eddie who's out of view on the couch. “No, no, babe, no need to get out the inhaler. It's private, so I can't say, but she's okay.”

Beverly smiles, just a little. It’s nice that Richie feels so comfortable around his parents, he can use a pet name for Eddie and feel unafraid of the consequences. “You can say,” she says quietly, knowing Richie’s listening out for her.

“Oh. Okay. Men suck, and Bev broke things off with her Sam. That's her — uh, friend. Remember, from Farm Prom?”

“Yeah, kind of. I didn't know they were...?”

“Yeah, I didn't either, but no matter what, we’re taking Bev’s side in the divorce.”

“Technically, it was mutual,” Bev says, laughing a bit. She's grateful Richie was around to be called on for this; she used to worry back when her dad was alive that she might never laugh again. It was a macabre thought, but it kept her alive. She's glad she doesn't need that thought anymore. 

“Technically it was—” 

“Richie,” Eddie bellows, probably annoyed to be interrupted while Jeopardy’s on, which makes Mr. Tozier laugh where he's seated on the couch next to Eddie.

“Okay, okay, sheesh, I can't hear what you hear! Don't get your panties in a twist.” Shuffling, then Beverly sees Eddie’s hand fly out from inside the living room and latch onto Richie’s curls. “Ow, ow! Frisky little fucker!” Richie laughs, a commotion happening in the living room that ends in Eddie lightly and affectionately tapping Richie's cheek. “So can I leave you? Will you make it? Will you survive without my tender hand and capacious member?”

_ “Asshole! _ Not with your dad in the room! Gross, you freak!” Bev hears Eddie screech, laughing riotously as he does. “Go, before I punch your dick off!”

“Noooo, not Big and Rich, he needs you!”

“Rich,” Bev laughs as Eddie quite literally growls. 

“Alright, alright. Tell me if that one guy wins.” He turns to Bev, throwing an arm over her shoulders, all practiced confidence and endless affection. “Grab your tea and step into my office…”

Richie shepherds her up the stairs and into his bedroom, shutting the door. With his family and waiting audience left downstairs and only Beverly in his line of sight, Richie softens. “What happened, Levvie? You and Sam seemed good together.”

“We were. That’s not — It’s just — She wasn't 'the one', you know? I didn’t _ love _ her. She wasn't my forever kind of love the way Eddie is for you.”

Richie’s cheeks flush and he breaks eye contact, picking at his jeans. “You aren’t me and Eddie, though.”

“I know. But you guys are the closest thing I’ve got to role models in that department, so…” Richie looks up, grinning, the blush still prevalent on his cheeks but forgotten in the light of something he can tease her for. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Oh, I absolutely _ will _ let it go to my head! God, I can’t wait to tell Eds,” he sighs dreamily.

“Don’t!” Bev squeaks. “This is a best-friends-forever-only conversation.”

“Oh. Sure, Bev, no problem-o.” He mimes zipping his lips closed, and Bev’s shoulders slump in relief, flopping onto the mattress beside Richie.

“Good.”

“What’s the deal with the dudes who followed you back here? Do I got some heads to knock together?” He asks, cracking his knuckles as loudly and dramatically as he does everything.

“Unless you can get by on just one name, then no.”

“What’s the name?”

“Roy. He looked to be about 40. They were probably just passing through.” Richie winces, looking inexplicably ashamed. “Don’t worry, Ditch, I consider you one of the gals anyway.”

Richie looks up, smiling gleefully, more earnest and genuine than Bev thinks she’s ever seen him. “You do?”

“Absolutely,” Bev swears, holding out a pinky, which he immediately links with her’s. “I’ve never considered you just a dude like I do the rest of the Losers. If anything, you’re like… dude-adjacent. I just trust you the way I do the girls I know. That’s all.”

“Dude-adjacent,” Richie whispers reverently, grinning, “I _ love _ that.”

A knock comes at Richie’s bedroom door. “Who is it?” He trills.

“Eddie. May I come in?”

“Bev, hop off my dick, Eddie’s coming,” he stage-whispers.

“Eat glass,” she whispers back just as loudly.

“Assholes,” Eddie sighs, pushing his way in. Richie smiles brightly at the sight of him, and makes grabby-fingers at him, begging for physical intimacy as he always is. Eddie latches onto Richie right away with only a quick flick of his eyes to Bev to make sure she’s comfortable with it. She smiles at him warmly, grateful for the consideration, and nods, so Eddie moves to sit on Richie’s crossed legs, tangling his fingers in Richie’s hair, and kissing his cheek chastely. “James won.”

“Shut _ up!” _ Richie groans. “And I missed it?!”

“Your dad taped it.”

“But what’s the point, you just spoiled the ending! Now I’m gonna know the whole time that James wins!” 

Eddie just shrugs as Bev hides her grin in the lip of her mug. “You told me to tell you, idiot.”

“You know I’m too stupid to survive,” Richie sighs, as if it were obvious that Eddie shouldn’t have told him.

“Are not,” Eddie grumbles, tugging lightly on his curls. Richie’s eyes flutter shut and his smile widens as he tucks his face into Eddie’s shoulder. Bev looks away, still smiling. She’s grateful that the two of them trust her enough to be affectionate with each other around her. She knows that’s not too easy for Eddie.

“Thanks, Eds,” Richie whispers, and Bev feels more certain than she did in the moment that breaking things off with Samantha was the right decision. She knows she could never love Sam the way Eddie and Richie love each other. Even if Richie _ is _ right, that they aren’t Richie and Eddie and they don’t have to love each other the way the two of them do, she knows that even on their best days, she and Sam were never this casually intimate with one another. They didn’t have passion laced between their fingers the way Richie and Eddie do, the way even Maggie and Wentworth Tozier do. Bev never expected things with Samantha to last forever.

Sitting with her mug of tea on Richie Tozier’s bed, the anger she felt towards the men in the truck is a distant memory, and the uncomfortability she felt when Sam asked why she doesn’t kiss her is gone. All that’s left is the safety Eddie and Richie bask in together, extending their bubble to include Bev for the night.

Richie throws his arm out, grabbing the TV remote off the bedside table, flicking the power on, and as it warms, he offers Bev the empty spot at his side, arm out, an invitation only if she wants it to be. She accepts, curling into him, resting her tea on his hip with one hand and fisting the fingers of her other into the collar of his shirt as Eddie shuffles and leans his back against Richie’s chest, seated in the bend of his legs, his head lolling between her head and Richie’s.

As Richie and Eddie casually bicker about what channel to put on, half-heartedly wrestling for purchase of the remote, Beverly feels more at peace than she ever did with Sam. She realizes with a quiet sort of bravery that she doesn’t need a girlfriend to still feel whole. She has all the love she needs in her life with her little Losers’ Club, and she doesn’t need anything more than what she’s had since she was 13 years old. It’s wonderful, she thinks, smiling into Eddie’s shoulder, that she has so much love in her life, with or without Samantha Price.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> older men being very very gross to an underage girl


	6. July, 1994

_ I know you have a heavy heart   
_ _ I can feel it when we kiss  
_ _ So many men stronger than me   
_ _ Have thrown their backs out trying to lift it  
_ _ But me, I'm not a gamble  
_ _ You can count on me to split  
_ _ The love I sell you in the evening_  
_By the morning won’t exist_

—Lua, Bright Eyes

The day before Beverly Marsh leaves for New York, she and Richie swipe a bottle of cheap wine from Freese’s and give each other matching tattoos.

The day didn’t start out with those bright ideas, however.

It’s Sunday, and Bev leaves tomorrow in her aunt’s hatchback to stay with her aunt’s daughter in New York City. She's only met her cousin a handful of times at various holiday shindigs; Daisy is nine years her senior and already graduated high school by the time her aunt came to Derry, but she's talked on the phone a bunch of times over the summer, and Bev has to say, Daisy makes the city sound so fucking _ cool. _She can't wait to explore it with her. She wishes she could bring along all her Losers, but that isn't the way the cookie crumbled. She's trying not to think about that. She's excited. Really, she is. She's barely even nervous. What she is, though, is forlorn, especially in the face of Richie’s sadness. 

All her things are packed in her room in boxes, her aunt’s things having already been shipped to Daisy’s apartment, so they decide to go to Richie’s because it’s easier, better that way. Bev doesn’t want to spend her last day in Derry in an empty house. It’s just her and Richie because Bill’s gone and Ben’s gone and, fuck, she's almost gone too. It feels right to say goodbye to Derry in the same breath in which she says goodbye to Richie. 

Or, it would be if Richie’s hasn't been so fucking _ morose _ the whole day. 

Bev doesn’t know how to cheer him up, but she’s trying everything. She says she’ll go out and get weed and they can toke up one last time, but that was definitely the wrong thing to say because his shoulders slump, he gets a bit misty-eyed, and says, “That’s okay.”

He’s quiet and sad and not cracking jokes—hasn't pulled a single Voice all day—and entirely unlike himself. So Bev suggests something they don’t partake in a lot: alcohol.

Bev prefers the weighted blanket of weed to the murkiness of alcohol, but she doesn't mind the floaty feeling wine gives her. Sometimes, it's preferable. It's a good way to escape when she's feeling cooped up, trapped in her skin. Richie just likes anything that'll get him out of his head no matter the substance, and usually that worries Bev, but at this point, she's willing to try anything.

Richie just shrugs in response which is better than his sullen denials of everything else she's suggested, so they walk down to Freese’s and concoct a plan on the way. Okay, Bev concocts a plan with minimal input from Richie, but that’s okay, she’s been doing shit like this with her eyes closed since she was a preteen. Richie distracts the cashier by doing what he does best—being loud. He orchestrates a fall and knocks over an entire display, cussing dramatically to get the cashier’s attention, and like clockwork, the guy rolls his eyes and comes over to help. Bev smirks, slips a bottle of wine in her satchel, two bags of candy (Sour Patch Kids: her favorite, and a Whachamacallit: Richie’s) and walks out.

Richie follows a minute later with a two liter bottle of vanilla Coke (bought to placate the cashier, the plan all along) and they walk back to the Tozier’s in silence. It’s weird. However, Bev signed up for weird with Richie Tozier. Maybe not this type of weird, but no matter how Richie’s acting, she’s still going to love him forever. Leaving town won’t change that.

She just wishes Richie would believe her when she says it. 

It takes a glass of wine down the hatch, the consumption of all their candy, and a little needling on Bev’s part to get Richie to admit to what’s soured his mood. But eventually, he admits, “It just fucking sucks that we can’t all be in the same place.”

“Yeah,” Bev agrees, because it does.

“Plus, Ben and Bill not calling has — ”

“Bill’s — ”

“In England, I know. But Ben? He fucking loved us, Bev, I _ know _ he did.”

She frowns, “Bill did, too,” because if she trusts any man’s friendship, it’s Bill’s. Even over Ben, over Richie, too; Bill adored them all like the family he loved and lost.

Richie shakes his head, hair falling in his eyes like a wet dog. “It’s different with Ben, you know it is. Bill loved the shit out of us, don’t get me wrong, but before us, Ben was so fucking _ lonely. _ He said that to us once, remember? That before us, he didn’t know what friendship even was.” 

Bev chews on her lower lip and nods; she remembers alright, probably more than Richie does—she was the only sober person in the room at that get-together. Ben was pouring whiskey down his throat like a parched man, the only way he was able to be honest with them, Richie was cross-faded as he usually was at parties like that, and Bill was completely wrecked on weed. It was over winter break, right before Ben left, and it sings to a similar tune that today’s funeral dirge seems to.

“I don’t know why he wouldn’t call, but it’s scaring me into thinking you won’t either.” He frowns, fingering the rim of his wine glass. He picks it up by the stem between his pointer and middle fingers and says in a James Dean Voice, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. I just don’t know who y’all would be without me.”

“Aw, we don’t either, Ditchie,” Bev coos, throwing an arm around his neck and pulling him in close to give him a noogie.

“Ay, watch the money maker ‘ere, li’l lady!”

“Your hair is the money maker? This frizzy mop? If you’re getting money in the _ dog show, _ maybe.”

“Hey!” Richie laughs, adjusting so his head is pillowed in Bev’s lap. He takes another sip of his second glass and sighs.

“What can I do to make you believe I’ll never leave you, not all the way?”

Richie pulls a face, all scrunched up. “Stitch you to my side? Tattoo you on my skin? I don’t know, Bev. I really don’t.”

Despite the sadness that settles in the pit of her stomach at his words, her eyes light up. “Tattoo you say?”

And finally, _ finally, _ Richie smiles. He sits up, grinning like a fool. “Tattoo I say.”

“Okay. I’ll go downstairs to find a good needle, you break open a pen and drain the ink into a cup. I’ll be right back,” Bev says, already scrambling up.

“Don’t forget me on your journey, dear heart!” Richie calls as she skids down the hall in her socks. His laughter inspires hers, and it feels freeing to hear it echoing through the house, like maybe she doesn’t have to leave all the good stuff from Derry behind when she goes.

She asks Mr. Tozier for purchase to their sewing kit, but as she roots through it, she starts to feel nervous. Who will she be when she’s hundreds of miles away from the most evil place on earth? The clown said to her, _ you’ll die if you try, _ written in blood on her bedroom walls, and those words have made a home inside her, even still, all these years later.

“Excited about the move, Bev?” Mr. Tozier asks, smiling behind him as he does the dishes. And with his back to her, Bev feels a little less terrified to be honest. A little less scared of men. A little more sure of herself, even if that sureness comes with shaking hands.

“Mr. Tozier,” she says quietly, but he still stops the clanking of dishes and listens, “I… I’m scared.”

“Of?” He asks mildly. 

“Leaving,” she admits, and then sighs angrily, because this is stupid. She shouldn’t be scared to leave the most horrible place she’ll ever go. “Like, I’m excited as shit, don't get me wrong, but this stupid, gross town is all I’ve ever known. I don’t know what to do without it. I don’t know who I’m going to be.”

Went hums consideringly. He shuts off the water and dries his hands, then walks over to the table and sits across from Bev. She doesn’t look up and continues to poke through the tin of sewing supplies even though she's already found what she needed, embarrassed to be asking a man for advice at all. But Wentworth is a kind man, a gentle man. He likes to read the newspaper every morning, and cry to romantic comedies with his wife, and he’s allowed Richie and Eddie to sleep here together every Saturday for years despite knowing what he knows about them. He reacted so kindly when Richie came out of the closet. He’s a good man. Bev doesn’t think there’s very many of those left in the world, if there were even any to start with.

And then Wentworth asks her a question no one has ever awarded Beverly: “Well, who do you want to be?”

The answer is far easier to find than she thought it would be: “I want to be a fashion designer. I want to live in a tiny apartment with peeling paint, an old cat and a nice girl. I want to make and see beautiful, inspiring art. I want to still be Richie’s best friend. I want to visit him in California and have him visit me in New York. I want to feel safe on the street, and safe in my house, and safe in my skin. I want to never have to come back to Derry again, but I still want to keep all the friends I have now, even if I make new ones along the way. I want to be happy most of all. I just want to be as happy as I try to make everybody else.”

Wentworth smiles, small and true, “Then go out and get it, Beverly. What’s stopping you?”

“Money,” Beverly says, frowning into the tin, poking her pointer finger lightly with the sewing needle she's been toying with. “Time. Feelings. The inability to make people act the way I want them to.”

Went laughs quietly. “That’s all stuff even an old geezer like me can relate to. When I was young, I thought I knew best, and was always trying to get people to bend to my will. It was Maggie who trained that outta me.”

“How’d she do that?” Bev asks, putting the needle down on the table and finally looking up at Richie’s father. 

“Well, you know Mags, she’s a firecracker and won’t let anybody tell her what to do or how to feel, so if I wanted to keep her, I had to adapt. She likes the movies she likes, goes the places she wants, does the things she thinks are best. She’s kind, of course, and she’s so wicked smart. But she refuses to change for anyone. And when I gave up on the idea that there was anything about her I could change, I loved her even more. I hope I taught that same lesson to my kids—” He gives Bev a significant look, “—all my kids.” She smiles softly, breaking eye contact. “If you let go of the idea that you can change people, you’ll be so much happier.”

“Do you think they listened?” She asks her hands because it's easier than admitting that she's asking Mr. Tozier. 

“I like to think so. Lucy, she’s thoughtful and compassionate and creative, but she’s got Maggie’s fighting spirit. She won’t let herself be changed and nobody walks all over her. I’ve tried to parent some of the stubbornness out of her, but I think being the sister of someone like Richie helped that some. She’s kinder than she would’ve been without him. Softer. More understanding. And I see how Richie is with Eddie, not trying to train the neuroses out of him and accepting him at face value, but not letting himself be pushed past his limits. He knows what he wants; I just wish he had an easier time asking for it. You all help, though, all his friends. If I had found Maggie as early as Richie found all of you, I think I would’ve been a lot happier a lot quicker.”

“Are you happy now, Mr. Tozier?”

“I am,” he smiles, then tilts his head down, looking at her mock-disapprovingly through his eyelashes. “Though I’d be a lot happier if you finally got with the program and called me Went.”

She laughs. “Sorry, Mr. Tozier. It’s what I was taught by my ma.”

He sighs, put upon. “I understand, Maggie taught Lucy and Richie the same thing. Though I wish Chich had actually listened to her. He’s gonna give her a coronary one day calling her Mags.” She laughs again. Fuck, she’s gonna miss the safety of this place. Quarry notwithstanding, she thinks it’s the only safe place left in all of Derry. “You almost done picking out that needle? Chich is gonna start getting into trouble without someone to entertain him, and his tattered clothes won't sew themselves.”

“God, don’t I know it,” she says, trying not to feel bad for lying to Mr. Tozier about the nature of the needles. She gathers the two needles she think will serve them best and nods, standing up. Mr. Tozier does the same. “Thanks, Mr. Tozier. For everything. You’ve been the best defacto dad. I…” She gets a little choked up, realizing only as she says it that that’s who Mr. Tozier’s been to her all these years—a replacement for the ugly, awful man she was saddled with at birth—and how this is probably the last time she’ll ever see him. Since her father’s death, Wentworth has taken her under his wing and allowed her a safe haven in Derry. Without him and Richie, she thinks she would've probably gone her whole life without knowing good men existed at all. 

“You're a good man, Mr. Tozier.” 

Mr. Tozier smiles. “You're a good girl, Beverly. You've been the best best friend a guy could ask for his son. Thank you for everything you've done for him.”

“Thank _ you _ for raising him to be such a good man.”

“He makes it easy. He did most of the work himself.”

“Don't sell yourself too short.” She stands up as she laughs quietly, and awkwardly, she holds out her arms for a hug. 

“Oh,” Went says softly, surprised but honored, and stands to give her one. It only lasts a few seconds at most, but it's the first time since she was 13 she's hugged an adult man. It feels more momentous than it is. Went must know it, because he comes away wiping tears from his eyes. 

“I'll never forget the kindness you showed me, Went,” she promises. “Never ever.”

“Hey,” he smiles a bit watery, “you called me Went.”

“Yeah,” she marvels, finally letting go of the little piece of herself that held onto politeness around men like a vice, a holdover from a life she hopes she’ll never have to live again, “I guess I did.”

She picks up the needles, waving them around, and goes upstairs, finally wiping away her own tears. When she comes in the bedroom after disinfecting the needles in the bathroom, Richie yells, arms spread, “Hey! What took you so long? Thought you got lost in the sauce.”

“I was just talking to your dad,” she smiles, sitting down on the floor with Richie, all the medical supplies she knows Eddie stocked in the house scattered between them. 

“‘Bout li’l ol’ me?” Richie asks in a Shirley Temple Voice.

“A little,” she laughs, winking swiftly. “Don't let it go to your head.”

“Oh, Miss Marsh, did you _ finally _ get Daddy’s permission for my hand in marriage?” He cries, swooning and curling up against her side, finally using a Voice as he drops his head heavily onto her shoulder.

“You wish,” Bev snorts, shoving him lightly which just makes him collapse even more heavily onto her.

“So, tats?”

“Tats. What do you think we should make?”

Richie sits for a while, tapping his chin, and then startles as he seems to come up with an idea. He drops his hand from his face, looks away, and in a very quiet voice, quieter than he’s been since they met all those years ago, suggests, “Maybe a 7?”

Bev smiles at him, takes his hand, squeezes, and says, “Yeah, Ditch, I think that’s a great idea.”

He smiles back and throws one leg out over Bev’s lap, leaning over to ruck up his jeans. He slaps his hands on his thighs. “Get to work li’l lady!”

She laughs, shakes her head, and does as she’s told.

She’s been poking Richie for over an hour when he finally stops cracking jokes about how bad it hurts and says something serious. “I told Eddie I want him to marry me.”

Bev smiles at his ankle and nods, dipping the needle into the cup once again. “I know. He told me.”

“Did he now?” Richie barks, leaning an elbow on his bent knee and grinning. “What did that old rascal say?”

“Stop moving around so much, this shit is permanent. And it’s a secret,” Bev shrugs, glancing up at him. “Did he talk to you about what we said?” She remembers walking with Eddie at the Derry Summer Fair, talking about Richie’s proposal at their graduation party, and how he never said yes. Internally, she crosses her fingers, but she already knows the answer.

“Nah, don’t think so. He hasn’t brought it up since then. He never said… I mean, I don’t think he took it seriously, anyway.”

Bev frowns, wiping away a spot of blood with a tissue. “That’s not true.”

“It’s fine. I mean, the guy can’t tell me he loves me unless he’s completely blasted or mid-coitus. Either he doesn’t want to, or he’s really good at keeping secrets.” Richie sighs harshly. “But why would he keep this a secret? He _ knows _ how much I love him. I know he does.”

“Does he? I mean, have you told him in no uncertain terms how gone you are for him?”

“I… I mean, I can’t. He wouldn’t be able to say it back, either because he doesn’t love me or because he’s scared that he does, and I’m a coward, too. I wouldn’t be able to take it if he didn’t… if he doesn’t…”

Bev chews on her lower lip, thinking as she puts the needle down in the cup. “Richie, I think you deserve to be able to tell the guy you love that you love him. I think he deserves to hear it from you, even if he can’t reciprocate the gesture. You love him, you want to marry him for christ’s sake, and I think you should tell him that.”

“He didn’t even say yes. I doubt he really wants to. Probably just chalked it up to his old pal Rich being crazy again.”

Bev flicks him on the forehead and he cringes. “Stop it with that word. You’re _ not _ crazy.”

“But I kind of am,” he laughs, a bit hysterical. “I mean, you know how I can get. I was being crazy earlier! I know you love me, and I know you’ll call, but my brain is broken and keeps screaming at me that you deserve to live your life far away from Derry. Far away from me.” He frowns at her expression, and looks away. “And I know you don’t want to be without us, but that’s how the how this shit goes. You have to be. And you’re gonna be so happy in New York, and I want that for you, I really do. But it’s hard to remember that with my crazy-brain telling me that if you don’t call, my whole fucking heart’s gonna break. It can’t take anymore fissures. The thing is hanging on by a thread as it is, especially after Prom, and-and Eddie not saying yes to my proposal, and—”

“Richie, _ stop,” _ Bev says, wrapping her hand around Richie’s wrist flying through the air. She drags it down and threads their fingers together. “One, I will call. Two, I love the shit out of you, and I always will. Three, Eddie does too. And four, what happened at Prom?”

“I, uh… I told Eddie about my su…” God, Bev feels one wrong word away from shattering completely. She won’t be able to take it if Richie says what she think he’ll say. “It’s fine. It’s personal. He just told me he loved me but only because he was completely wasted. I mean, you saw him.” Bev deflates, both from relief that Richie didn’t finish his sentence the way she thought he would, and understanding of not wanting to be vulnerable at any cost.

“Yeah, I did.”

“It’s not his fault, with all the shit his ma put him though. I know that. But it still _ sucks.” _

Bev snorts, and nods. “Yeah, it really does.”

“I just… want to be taken seriously as much as I don’t want to be taken seriously even a little bit.” He looks up at Bev and smiles. “That’s why I love you, Levvie. You always know when to take me seriously.”

“I sure as fuck do,” Bev says, puffing her chest out with pride. “Best friends for life, bitch.”

“Abso-fuckin’-lutely.” Richie holds out the pinkie of the hand Bev’s not still holding, and she interlocks them together. “Thanks for letting me vent.”

“Anytime, Ditch,” she says, picking the needle back up and getting to work.

“God, that really fuckin’ hurts.”

“Wimp.”

“Bitch.”

It takes four hours in total, and a lot of shed tears (mostly on Richie’s part), but eventually, the two of them have 7’s tattooed on their ankles, Bev’s tattoo on Richie is in her script with the line through it, and Richie’s on her is a little messy, a little lopsided, but completely perfect, just like him. Richie grabs his Polaroid camera and adjusts their legs so they’re tucked together, and takes two pictures. He drops the camera haphazardly and flaps the pictures until they develop. 

“There we are, Bevs. Two peas in a pod.” Beverly looks over at Richie and smiles when he meets her eyes.

“I love you, Ditch.” 

He smiles back, a little watery, and says, “Love you too.”

She grabs a photo, slips it in the pocket of her dress, and gets up. “Will you walk me out?”

“It’d be my honor, miss.”

He follows her up and holds out an arm for her to take. She slips her arm underneath his, thinking if this is what life is, maybe after all, it’s not so bad. Not bad at all. Not with Richie Tozier and the six best friends she’ll ever make inked onto her skin.

Together, they make their way downstairs, and Richie pulls her in for a tight hug when she opens the door. “If you forget to write and call, I’ll eat you alive.”

She puffs out a laugh in the crook of his shoulder and squeezes tight around Richie’s waist. “I could never forget you, Richie Tozier.”

He sniffs sharply, nods, presses a hard kiss against her shorn curls, and pulls away. He wipes a tear, and attempts to smile. It breaks Bev’s heart to see, and fuck, she wishes she could take this hilarious, crude, wreck of a man that she feels honored to have grown up alongside of with her.

But that’s not how life is. Life deals you cards filled with the worst people in the world and the best, and then takes them all back when the game is over. Maybe that’s just how life goes. It doesn’t have to be so bad. She got the chance to love five wonderful, messy boys and one Richie, and that’s a lot more than most girls who love girls can say for their childhood. Her father broke her, but her best friends put her back together. She thinks, maybe for the first time, that she deserves all the love in the world. She never thought she’d get to a place where she believed that.

Thank god for Richie Tozier for making her laugh when she thought she’d never smile again. The best best friend there is.

“See ya later, Bevvie Bevvie From the Levvie.”

And it might seem strange when she looks back on it tomorrow, a week from now, a year from now, a lifetime from now, but she doesn’t think of her father at all, not even fleetingly, and says, “After a while, Richie Richie From the Ditchie.”

She rocks up on her toes, presses a long kiss to Richie’s cheek, and then as quickly as Richie Tozier was in Beverly Marsh’s life, he’s gone.


	7. December, 1999

_ I want love  
_ _ But I don't just want love, I want you  
_ _ I see the beach house, your sweet mouth  
_ _ But the terrible news is that love  
_ _ Is not how it seems on the screens  
_ _ Yeah, real love has problems but it's what's in between that's the best  
_ _ The way that she looks when she's dressed  
_ _ Through an all quiet Tuesday_  
_Always a blue day with you_

—Old Eden, Honeywater

Beverly Marsh meets the love of her life on New Year's Eve, 1999.

She was supposed to go out with her friends at work, ringing in the new year with the girls at the fashion magazine she arranges spreads for, but as she starts walking from the Christopher Street subway stop, she passes by a building that looks hopping called the Duplex. Bev isn't too big on drinking, only likes to occasionally toke up with her roommate Lauren, a friend from college that somehow became her roommate of three years. She prefers her vices with the possibility of lung cancer.

There's no line at the Duplex, but it's seemingly packed to the brim from the looks of it, and she's freezing cold, deciding like a fool to forgo a jacket because there was a warm spell today, going up to the 50s, and the minimal slush of the city in winter had all but completely melted away. But night has since fallen, so, teeth chattering, she goes up to the bouncer and flashes him her ID, breathing hot into her cupped hands. The man is about 6’7”, towering above her as a slab of pure muscle. She notices a Star of David around his neck, smiles, and says, “Zai gezunt.”

“And be gezunt,” he smiles, waving her in without asking for the cover. She doesn't remember where she learned that bit of Yiddish, but she's had it in her arsenal for as long as she can remember. She thanks him earnestly and steps into the dark club with a wave of gratitude for the heat pumping inside. 

She frowns to herself as she weaves her way up to the bar, as she always does when she remembers the fuzziness of her childhood. She remembers her father, evil incarnate. She remembers her aunt, strong and powerful, spine straight like she's daring the world to fuck with her. She remembers her nightmares, coming every night for as long as she can remember. She doesn't sleep very often as a result of them. But it's okay, she thinks. She's fine with it. 

Really. She's fine. 

Bev finally makes it up to the bar, still shivering, and orders a whiskey soda when the bartender notices her. She has to yell to be heard over the speakers pumping out _ 1999 _ by Prince, but she doesn't mind. She turns slightly, watching a man wearing at least 50 multicolored plastic beads around round his neck go from person to person at the bar and gift everyone a string of them. When he makes it to Bev, she smiles at him, and he laughs, big and bright and bold. “Where's your glitter, sweets? It's New Year’s Eve, but you'd think it's a funeral looking at this outfit!”

“Oh, I don't really…” She says, trailing off as he pulls a glow-stick out of his back pocket, snaps it, sticks one end into the other, and crowns it ceremoniously over her head.

“There,” he says, swiping some of the massive amounts of glitter under his eyes onto her cheek, “now it's a party.” And just as quickly as she meets him, the boy is gone, floating over to the girl next to her and placing a string around her neck, kissing both her cheeks as he says something to her, winking cheekily. He throws his arms around the man beside her who has so much glitter in his beard, Bev wonders if he’ll ever be able to get it out. The boy laughs gleefully as he presses kisses all over the bearded man’s face. He steadies the Mardi Gras boy’s hips with a small smile and buries his face into his neck. Bev looks away sharply, feeling a smile creep onto her face, exhilarated. 

“Hey,” comes a kind voice from beside her, “you're shaking. Are you alright? Nico, he doesn't mean any harm, honest.”

Bev turns and finds an absolutely stunning girl, her dark skin covered in bright blue glitter swirling in technicolor under the lights. Bev gets a little lost as she stares. “Yeah,” she says, trying to inconspicuously shake herself off when she notices the woman is smirking now. “No, he was fine. Just cold.”

“Oh, well, we can fix that.” She takes her coat from around her shoulders and drapes it over Bev’s.

“Oh, no, I'm fine, really,” Bev tries, tugging lightly at the collar, trying to give it back to her. The woman just shakes her head, still smiling, and grabs Bev’s hand instead. Beverly blushes and thanks the Duplex for its aversion to overhead lighting. “You don't even know me.”

“Well, I'm Kay.” She looks at Beverly expectantly. 

“I'm Bev. Beverly Marsh.”

“Nice to meet you, Bev, Beverly Marsh,” Kay says, extending a hand. “There. Now I know you.”

“I suppose you do,” Bev says, gnawing on her lower lip to try to keep from smiling back as she shakes Kay's hand. It doesn't work; Kay’s smile is contagious. 

“Plus, that isn't even my coat,” Kay says, nodding vaguely to the dance floor. “My friend left it with me to go work the crowd.” Kay waves, and Bev turns to see a beautiful drag queen wearing a blonde beehive wig and sequins from head to toe waving back. 

Bev lifts up a hand, then points to the fur coat around her shoulders, and yells to her, “Thanks!” She smiles, blowing Bev a kiss before twirling away in her motherfucker boots. “Everyone here’s so nice,” Bev marvels, almost to herself. “I've never been to a bar this friendly.”

“That's us queers for ya,” Kay trills. 

“Wait…” Bev says faintly, looking around at the rainbow strobe, the guys on guys, the girls on girls. 

“Honey,” Kay says warmly, a tinge of laughter in her voice, “you're in the West Village. What did you expect?”

“I just came in to get warm, I didn't… I mean, I'm…”

“You know, there's no entrance fee,” she says, voice kind and understanding. “You don't need to drop your sexual orientation at the door for Cohen to let you in.”

“Do you know everyone here?” Bev teases, glad for a subject change as she swivels back to face Kay. 

“Might as well,” Kay laughs, and Bev can't help it—at the beautiful sound of it, she joins right in. 

“McCall!” The bartender cries, “You better be back here in 15!” 

“Can't you see I'm busy, Seamus?!” Kay yells back, back to grinning infectiously. “Sorry, he’s rude. I bartend here, but only on the weekends. I'm not on shift tonight, Seamus just wishes I was.”

Bev hums, looking down at her full glass she hasn't even taken a sip from yet. “What's good here that you recommend?”

“Ooh, my favorite question. Let me guess your drink,” Kay grins, sidling up close to Bev, their knees braiding together. Beverly's cheeks burn as Kay studies her. “Okay, I got it.” 

She bounces out of Beverly’s orbit, and Bev can't help but feel a bit disappointed as she says, “Lay it on me.”

“A Manhattan, two olives.”

Bev wrinkles her nose, “Yuck.”

“Well, I never said I was a psychic,” Kay shrugs, smile not deterred. “You said you only meant to stop in. Where are you supposed to be if not here?”

“The Village Tavern. I was meeting my friends from work there.”

“Isn't that place a sports bar?” Kay asks, sticking her tongue out a little in disgust. “That's like, the straightest the West Village can get.”

“I certainly didn't pick it out. I don't remember the last time I watched a sport. I was probably forced.” Kay awards her a laugh, and Bev smiles in return. “What about you?”

“My friend goes on at 1 for the drag show. Plus, if the world’s gonna end at midnight, I’m going out with a bang. Literally,” Kay grins.

“The world’s not gonna end,” Beverly snorts, fingering the rim of her glass of whiskey soda.

“How do _ you _ know?” She squints. “Are you one of those psychics on the West End?”

Bev barks out a sharp laugh. “No.”

“Hey, they’re nothing to scoff at,” Kay smiles, tipping her drink at her. It almost sloshes out the side, but doesn’t. Bev doesn’t think this woman has ever done anything by accident. “I paid one 40 bucks last month to tell my future, and she said I’d meet the love of my life before the year’s end.”

Beverly hums consideringly. She wishes her hair was longer so she’d have something to hide herself with, away from Kay’s million mile stare. Bev doesn’t remember the last time she hid from anyone, or the last time she wished her hair were longer. It's a bit humiliating. Beverly Marsh is comfortable in her own skin, in her fearlessness—always has been, even back in the childhood she doesn't really remember all too well. She straightens her spine, even going so far as to push her bangs away from her eyes, and asks Kay, “And how’s that workin’ out for ya?”

Kay holds Bev’s stare for a long time until she finally says, voice casual as anything, but pitched low, just for Bev, “Pretty fuckin’ peachy, Miss Marsh.” 

People are swerving out of their way, ducking in between them, jostling them in the overcrowded bar. The music is pumping, bass thumping through the wood floor, and the lights are dim and multi-colored, but it’s almost like nobody else on earth exists at all. And then Kay cracks her signature smile, slow and sweet like a childhood summer, and Bev feels like it doesn’t matter if she never remembers home again so long as she’s got Kay McCall.

Maybe she doesn’t even need a home at all. Not when she can make a new one.

Kay’s dark eyes look endless, like she’s stared down the universe until it cowered at her feet, and now she can do what she wants with it. But instead of power or money, she’s here in a gay bar in the West Village with a humungous disco ball and drag queens wearing Motherfucker boots dancing to the loudest version of _ I Wanna Dance With Somebody _ in history all while choosing to stare _ Bev _ down, of all people. She feels faintly like someone she knows should be here, he would like it, would want to dance with somebody, too, but she’s too distracted by the depth of Kay’s eyes to parse whom.

“You know,” Beverly murmurs, speaking quietly just to give Kay all the more reason to lean in so closely, Bev can smell the musky perfume dabbed onto her sweaty, kaleidoscopic skin. Bev reaches up to play with the fur in the shoulder of Kay’s jacket. It’s faux—she can always tell the difference—and it makes her smile. “The world isn’t going to end.”

“You said that before,” Kay smirks, slipping off her seat and taking a step closer between Bev's spread legs, voice husky and low, sending shivers down her spine. “You sure you’re not a West End psychic, baby?”

“Nah,” Beverly grins, tugging her close, close enough that nobody could consider it friendly, even Kay herself. She just keeps smiling. Bravery is easier to access in the darkness. Courage is always roaring at the feet of Beverly Marsh. “But I have seen the future.”

“Is this gonna be some sort of pick up line? I thought that was my gig, toots.”

Bev giggles, and she’s struck suddenly by the way Kay’s inky black corkscrew curls fall into her eyes without her knowing it. She reaches up and tucks them behind her ear, but it isn’t Bev Marsh who does it, not really. It’s a younger version of her, someone who she barely remembers but who is always incessantly tugging at the recesses of her mind. She feels like she forgot to make a call to someone important somewhere down the line in that other life. She hopes whoever it was found what they needed, too.

“You remind me of someone,” Bev says wondrously.

“Someone good I hope.”

Bev nods, tipping her head up just as Kay tips hers down. “Someone very, very good.”

When their mouths connect, bursts of color explode behind Beverly’s closed eyes. She laughs into the kiss, startled by how good it feels, shocked by everything the end of the world has given her. If this really is the end of the world like Kay seems to think, Bev is more than happy to go down with her fingers tangled in the hair of a beautiful not-so-stranger, licking over the seam of her mouth, fearless, joyful, free as a bird.

The constant buzz in the back of her brain quiets, the loud and clashing thing that’s always calling out for her to _ remember _ why she has nightmares every night, _ remember _ the reason she keeps her hair cut short, _ remember _ the person she promised she’d call. The music is loud but she doesn’t care. The thrum of din in the crowd is a dull roar compared to her blood pumping real and vicious and _ alive _ in her veins. She is alive. She doesn’t think about the job offer she has to respond to before the 5th, a place uptown that wants to hire her to actually _ design clothes _ like she knows she’s meant to do. She doesn’t think about the pay not quite being enough to cover the cost of rent and food. She doesn’t think about leaving behind all the girls in her office she’s come to love.

She can’t think about anything but Kay McCall.

Beverly gasps into the kiss when Kay licks behind her teeth, can taste the fruity drink Kay had been sipping on when Beverly sauntered up, just trying to get warm. She shivers in Kay’s hold; she’s never been warmer than she is right now. The 19 degree weather is left outside, and she’s safe here, safe in the Duplex, safe with Cohen manning the front door, safe from assholes who’d want her dead for what she’s doing right now. Her roommate Lauren’s boyfriend is one of them. He struck up a conversation about how he wants to move from New York because of the AIDS epidemic. _ Leave the homos to kill each other. I don’t need to be any part of it. _ Bev had wanted to kill him. Remembering him makes her breath catch in her throat, makes her hands shake where they’re buried in Kay’s curls, and Kay pulls away a fraction.

“You with me, Marsh?” She murmurs, and Bev would’ve missed the words had they not been spoken directly into her mouth.

“Yeah. Yeah, sorry, I’m with ya.” She wants to be. She has no interest in thinking about the terrors of their world when there's a beautiful girl in her lap who wants to kiss her.

“It’s okay if you’re not, you know,” Kay says, trying to extricate herself, but Bev doesn’t want to be cold. Not anymore. Not when she’d know all the warmth in the world that she’d be missing.

She hasn’t kissed a girl since college. She hasn’t kissed _ anyone _ since college. Lauren tells her she needs to get laid. Beverly never agreed, not wanting to bring someone home who Lauren could tell her boyfriend about. It isn’t that she doesn’t trust Lauren; Beverly just doesn’t trust anybody.

But with her mile-wide grin and glittering ink-blot eyes, Kay seems like someone Bev could learn to trust. She pulls Kay back towards her, hooking her heels behind Kay’s thighs and smiling once more. Kay smiles back, melts into Bev’s hold easily. 

Bev thinks about saying something charming, but her mind is swimming with things she hasn’t ever felt in her life. All blended together, it feels a hell of a lot like hope.

So she leans into Kay’s embrace and kisses her again, spiraling into the hope stitched into their fingertips.

_ “60! 59! 58!” _

Kay laughs into Beverly’s open mouth and presses another kiss there, then another to the corner of her mouth, her cheek, along the cut of her jaw, the shell of her ear.

“So…” Bev starts, cupping the back of Kay’s neck as she kisses Kay’s cheek, “did I rock your world, Miss McCall?”

Kay smiles, skin shining under the disco ball with beautiful, kaleidoscopic color, eyes lit up like Rockefeller Center. “_45! 44!” _She nods, and says with stars in her eyes, “Miss Marsh, I have to say, no one has ever rocked my world quite like you.”

Bev grins like a cat that caught the canary. “Oh yeah?”

Kay throws her head back and laughs. Bev doesn’t let her go too far away, trapping her against the bartop so she doesn’t fly away with her fairy dust and angel wings. Kay tips her head back down and smiles fondly at Beverly. Her skin heats up at the sight. She can’t imagine living the rest of her life and not seeing that smile again.

“Is this a one-time thing?” Bev asks, hope coloring her voice.

Kay sighs, kissing the tip of Bev’s nose. “It doesn’t have to be.”

_ “25! 24!” _

“I would very much like for it not to be,” Bev says, feeling a little too vulnerable for comfort.

“Then it won’t be.” Kay turns to the side, climbs up onto the bar and easily losing Bev’s wandering hands. She grabs something from underneath the bartop, then crawls back to sit on the bar with her legs splayed, trapping Beverly between them. Her skirt rises up to the apex of her hips, her underwear red and lacy beneath her pantyhose, and Beverly _ burns. _ She places her hands on the outsides of Kay’s legs, hiding her from wandering eyes. She’s sure Kay knows what she looks like, but it's just in case. There’s something about Kay that makes Bev want to protect her magic. 

Kay uncaps the pen she grabbed with her teeth and grabs Bev’s hand. She writes seven numbers on the back of it. “That’s my landline. Call me tomorrow.”

“And what if I don’t?”

Kay smiles. “You will.”

_ “10! 9!” _

Bev slides her hands up and around Kay’s waist, tugging her forward just a little so she’s looming over Bev, seated high above her, encasing every sense she has. Kay slides her hands from around the back of Bev's neck to her hair, upending the glow-stick. Neither of them reach for it. “I really, really will.”

_ “6! 5!” _

“Happy New Year, Kay McCall,” Bev says, leaning up so their lips brush once again.

“Happy New Year, Beverly Marsh,” Kay says, and connects their mouths as the clock strikes midnight. _ Auld Lang Syne _ blasts through the speakers. All around her, boys are kissing boys, and girls are kissing girls. Beverly Marsh is among them, and never in her life has she felt more at peace, more true to herself, more _ alive. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MY GIRL KAY HAS FINALLY ARRIVED. if you mock me for the chapter count going up AGAIN i will eat you for breakfast.


	8. April, 2004

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi friends. this chapter might be hard for some people, so i've included trigger warnings in the end notes. click through if you need it. stay safe in this isolation. i love u all

_ She may contain the urge to run away  
_ _ But hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks  
_ _ Germaline, disinfect the scene, my love, love, love_  
_ Please don't go, I’ll eat you whole_  
_I love you so, I love you so, I love you so_

—Breezeblocks, Alt-J

It's 11 PM when Beverly shows up at Kay’s door in Bushwick on a warm evening in April. She's actively bleeding and has been for the past hour as she traveled on the train from Manhattan to Brooklyn. She received many strange looks from folks on the subway; rare for New York, the city that could have half its residents be throwing up on the sidewalk and no one would bat an eye. She stared down anyone who dared look at her funny with the dead-eyed look she's perfected over the years she's spent living in New York. Every one of the people who looked at her immediately looked away when they caught Bev’s bruised eye. 

The bruising and bleeding is not something Bev is used to. When she first met Tom Rogan, he seemed like a quiet, kind man who had a lot of faith in Beverly and her designs. The more time passes, the less Bev can recognize Tom—or perhaps, the more she is finally beginning to see Tom for who he truly is. Both of those thoughts are equally and primordially terrifying. Bev always thought herself to be a good judge of character. Sometimes, she thinks she still is, that Tom has just been having a hard year—that's why he's been so short with her, so quick to jump to anger when Bev isn't measuring up to the perfect designer she should be. 

But Tom has never been _ violent _ towards her. He had a rough day; the magazine they'd petitioned to give her designs a centerpiece spread had seemed like such a sure thing when they talked last week. Tom had been so close to the man Beverly remembers him being when they first met.

The magazine declined the offer, went in a ‘different direction’. Tom had been so furious when he got off the phone. He called Beverly into his office, locked the door, and started… screaming. Throwing things in every direction. Beverly took it. After all, it was her fault. They was her designs that had been rejected. Tom is just trying to help _ her. _It wasn't his fault that some of the things he threw in his fury struck Bev. She should've avoided them more deftly. This is all on her. 

So when Kay buzzes Bev up and sees the cut on her brow leaking blood all down her face and the gash on her cheek, sees the arm she's cradling against her chest, she immediately shepherds Bev into the bathroom and sets up her first aid kit on the sink. She's been quietly cussing for the past fifteen minutes but she doesn't ask Beverly directly what happened; Bev is grateful for it. She doesn't think she's ever going to be able to talk about it. 

And then, like her mouth is disconnected from her body, from her brain, she begins talking about it. “It isn't his fault. i-D Magazine turned us down. He was so angry at me, and he should have been. They're my designs that got rejected. He said he was sorry. He didn't mean to do it. But it's my fault.”

“Beverly,” Kay croaks slowly, sounding heartbroken enough to pull Beverly out of her reverie, “please don't tell me Tom Rogan did this to you.” Silence. They both already know the answer. “Fuck, Bev.”

“It's my fault,” Bev repeats. “It's my fault.”

“Baby,” Kay says quietly, cupping Bev’s jaw with her unoccupied hand, still cleaning the wound on her cheek, made by the letter opener Tom threw. “Baby, no, it really isn't.”

More silence. Bev lets her eyelids flutter closed as Kay’s soft, familiar hands that have mapped every inch of her body over these past four years gently fall against her skin, safe and wishful like shooting stars. 

“You're good at this whole playing-nurse gambit,” Bev smiles, eyes still closed. 

“Yeah, well I don't fucking wanna be,” Kay spits, furious at so much that Beverly can't even parse what at. The world, maybe. Tom, maybe. Herself, maybe. Bev isn't afraid that the anger is directed at her. She knows Kay better than that by now. 

“Kay,” Bev says softly, her brain trying to disconnect her from her body once again as she says it what she knows she needs to, “thank you. I mean that. No jokes, no sarcasm. You're my best friend, and I'm grateful for everything you do for me.” 

Bev hates how earnest she sounds, feels like she's violently allergic to it, but it's important to her that Kay knows she's the best thing about Beverly’s life—more than fashion design, more than Tom’s investment in her. Bev loves Kay, and it's imperative she knows how much, even if Bev can't say it. Isn't allowed to say it. Wishes like hell she could say it.

Kay smiles ruefully down at the alcohol she's patting onto the worst of the cuts, where Tom struck her across the arm with a paper weight. “I know, baby.”

Tom calls her ‘honey’, and Beverly is grateful. ‘Baby’ feels like a secret only shared between her and Kay. “Will you still love me even if—”

“You can stop right there,” Kay snorts. “I will love you no matter what. You can grow another arm, or crash my car, or-or-or fucking marry someone else, and I'm still gonna love you. I'm going to love you forever, Beverly Marsh. It's written in my DNA. It's coded in the stars. I will love you, always, end of story.”

Beverly smiles, ducking her head as Kay starts wrapping her arm and wrist in an Ace bandage. “Okay.”

_ Or marry someone else. _Beverly has to tell her. She has to. But then, Kay says, “I don't know why you let him do this shit to you,” and Beverly loses the nerve. It's okay. She'll get it back. She always does. Beverly makes nerve the way everyone else makes blood. 

Kay’s voice is flat with a warbling, angry intensity. She sounds close to tears. Beverly wonders if it was selfish to come to her with this. Beverly wonders if it’s selfish to love Kay at all; she doesn't deserve this woman’s endless, relentless kindness. She doesn't deserve anything but the cuts and bruises. 

“He was my first investor, Kay. We're business partners.” She’s terrified to tell Kay that Tom asked Bev to marry him yesterday after work. Well, 'asked’ is generous; it was more of a demand. _ I'm gonna marry you someday soon, Beverly Marsh. _She smiled. She laughed. She said okay. It's gotten easier to fake it after all the years she's spent doing so. “I wouldn't have any of the things in my life without him.”

“Except me.”

Beverly nods. “Except you.”

“I just… I know I have to share you with your work. You're so determined, all that fire, I never expected anything else. I love you for how devoted you are to a needle and thread. But I never thought I'd have to share you with _ him.” _

Kay has never met Tom. That's been purposeful on Bev’s part. She's kept her life with Kay at the Duplex quarantined off from her life at work. Sure, she helps Kay’s drag queen friends design their outfits, and she helps Kay shop because the girl’s closet would be a neon and bejeweled fucking disaster without her, but those things are just innate parts of who Bev is. She doesn't know who she'd be without art keeping her soul tethered to the earth. 

This thing she's had with Kay for the past four years has been nothing short of pure light. Kay keeps Bev walking when all she wants to do is collapse and let the feet of the New Yorkers trample her into the dirt. She misses Kay when she isn't around, hates that she can't share every waking moment of her time with her. The nights she spends at Kay’s place are everything. The way they kiss, the way Kay feels curled protectively around her, the way they fuck, the way her hands touch Beverly’s skin like a moth to a flame, it's everything she wants, everything she can't have. If she wants to make it big in fashion, she can't be out of the closet. She just can't be. 

Staying with Tom at his firm might be dangerous for her physically, but she can handle a few cuts and bruises. What she can't handle is losing everything she's ever worked for. Their power dynamic, while repulsive to Beverly on a good day, is worth the price of a few thousand designs that are going to help so many disenfranchised people who can't afford to look like the beautiful birds they are.

She doesn't know how to explain to Kay that Tom makes her feel comfortable, even in his bruising hand. She can hardly explain it to herself. She doesn't need to reach for excuses for him and his anger—they come naturally, like they were already waiting there for her on the tip of her tongue. It's easy for Bev to give in to what Tom demands of her. She knows, even with her private love for Kay, she's going to marry Tom. She doesn't love Tom, doesn't even really like him, but this will be a marriage of convenience more than anything else. It's what needs to be done, it's what's written in Beverly’s code, and she's going to do it.

However, she has no idea how she's going to get Kay to understand it though if she can barely understand it herself.

“Kay, I need to tell you something.”

“Uh oh. This doesn't sound too good.” Silence. Bev runs her thumb back and forth against the ridged backing of the bandage on her arm, then pushes down hard against it until she feels stars explode behind her eyes. “Bev. Hey. Stop that.”

“I'm sorry,” she says, close to tears, “I don't know why you stay with me when I don't know how to stop from putting myself through this.”

“Bev,” Kay sighs, picking up the iodine and wetting another cotton ball. She blots at a cut over her eyebrow and Beverly closes her eyes, both because it'll make Kay’s life easier and because she has no idea how to look at beautiful, striking, perfect Kay if she's going to have this conversation. “I love you. I will be on your side no matter what. But I can't just be expected to sit idly by and do nothing while this man hurts you like this. I won't do it. My heart can't take it.”

“The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you,” Bev says quietly, voice breaking halfway through. “I'm sorry I keep doing it. I don't mean to.”

“I know, baby. I know.”

They lapse into quiet as Kay puts a butterfly stitch over the cut on her brow. She smooths her thumb over the bandage, then trails her hand down Bev’s cheek to cup her jaw. “There. Good as new.”

“Thank you, Kay.” 

“Of course.”

“Would it…” Bev swallows and finds herself unable to ask the question she knows she needs to.

“Would it what, baby?”

“I… Fuck.” Bev sniffs harshly. “Do you have a blunt on you?”

“Always. Go out front, I'll be right back.” Kay slips out of the bathroom and Bev goes out into the living room to open the window above the couch that leads to Kay’s fire escape. Bev sits on the cool metal, letting the chill in the spring air soothe her. She can smell the scent from the magnolia tree in Kay’s front yard wrapping her in safety three stories up. She closes her eyes and tries to breathe.

Kay comes back out with the weed, a lighter, the ashtray her sister made her with the kiln at her college, and a sweatshirt. Bev shrugs on the sweater that smells like safety and home as Kay puts the ashtray down between them and lights the one-hitter between her lips with practiced ease. She takes a hit and passes it over to Bev, who does the same. Bev blows upwards, and just to make Kay smile, blows a set of smoke rings. Kay golf-claps, and they grin at each other before Bev looks back out into the forever-illuminated New York night. The light pollution from Manhattan makes the clouds glow a beautiful silver. The familiar sight is what finally allows Bev to speak. 

“Do you think we should break up?”

“No,” Kay says immediately, taking another hit and letting it out. “Do you?”

“No. You're the best part of my life. You’d have to pry my hands off you with forceps.” Kay snorts indelicately. Beverly smiles at the sound. “I just can't cut things off with Tom.”

“I know. He holds your whole company in his hands. If he pulls out, the rest of your investors will follow. So I get that aspect.” Kay swallows, takes another hit between pinched fingers, and closes her eyes. “What I don't get is why you let him hurt you. You stand up to everyone from assholes on the train to tourists in Midtown. Why is this asshole with a fat wallet any different?”

“I can't explain it, Kay, I'm sorry.” Bev put her forehead into her hand, slumping her shoulders. “I just can't say no to him. He controls too much of my future. He isn't always violent, I swear. He had a bad night, you know the Dow is down three points and—”

“Bev, stop,” Kay snorts, waving her hand. “I don't want to hear the excuses. I don't want to break up with you either because I’ll just worry about you even more than I already do.”

“One day,” Bev smiles, grabbing the blunt back, “we're gonna own this town. My designs will be everywhere and you won't have to hide in the shadows of my life. It'll be you and me, baby, front and fucking center, live in technicolor. We’ll take over the fucking world together.”

“I like the sound of that,” Kay smiles as Bev takes the final hit and stubs out the lit end of the cig. “Just a little bit more time, right?”

“Just a few more years, baby. Soon enough, it's going to be you and me. Loud and in love. Proud and powerful as we sweep our way across Manhattan.”

“We'll still live in Brooklyn though, right? I can't stand to be parted from the devoted bodega cat next door.”

Bev grins, and shakes her head with a lifetime’s worth of fondness. “Whatever you want, baby girl.”

Kay wraps her arm around Bev’s waist and presses a kiss to the shell of her throat. Bev tilts her head back against the cool brick of Kay’s building and breathes in, then out. Fuck, there's the nerve. There's the bravery. There's the truth. “I'm going to have to marry him, Kay.”

“I know.” Silence. “I'm gonna keep on loving you, if that's alright with you.”

“Baby,” Bev smiles, hiding a clandestine kiss in the tangles of Kay’s hair, safe from violent eyes, safe from the world, safe in the silver light of the city that will belong to them one day, “that's all I've ever wanted.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: physical abuse, brief self-harm, blood, abusive relationship, smoking marijuana


	9. September, 2016

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> click through to the end notes for trigger warnings! love u

_ When all your friends have come and gone  
_ _ And the sun no longer shines  
_ _ And the happiness for which you long  
_ _ Is washed away like an ocean's tide_  
_You must follow your heart_

—Against the Grain, City and Colour

Bev feels a little silly that she didn't realize it beforehand, but road tripping with four boys in one minivan is a fucking _ nightmare. _

For starters, Richie apparently has a bladder the size of a thimble and whines for Eddie to pull over at virtually every rest stop from Maine to Atlanta. And speaking of Eddie, Bev knows he drives for a living, but the horror that dawned upon her was fierce when he loaded all their bags in the trunk, then said, _ if I'm going to die in a car crash, it's going to be me behind the wheel. _Terrifying. He's seemingly doubling down on that, swerving in and out of lanes like a maniac and cursing out other drivers like a madman. Mike never seems to stop being voraciously hungry, and Ben has very specific music that he will and will not listen to, so they've been cruising to fucking Tim McGraw for 90 straight miles straight.

In short, Bev might kill her best friends before they make it to Stan. 

But things in the minivan aren't all bad. For all her kvetching about Eddie’s driving, Bev hasn't felt this safe and looked after since childhood, since Kay’s hands tending to her cuts and bruises, since Bill’s last words to them: _ I will protect you guys at any cost. _ Bev doesn't remember the last time she felt safe around a man, let alone _ six _ men. The moment she saw Bill again, she knew that fact would change. The way he held her before they descended into the sewers, kept her safe in his arms and expected nothing but the affection of a sister in return, Bev felt comfort in a way she hasn't felt in years, not without Kay by her side. 

Kay is dealing with Beverly’s divorce lawyer back in New York while Bev and the boys drive to Atlanta. Remembering her boys was what finally gave Bev the strength to walk out on Tom with her ring like a leash left on the kitchen table. She’s still covered in the yellowing bruises she received when she told Tom she was leaving him, but it’s okay now. She’s never going to receive another bruise from a man again. It’s finally over. When she called Kay and told her, well, everything, told her about the clown and her boys and about leaving Tom, Kay said she’d never been more proud of anyone in her life. Bev is still carrying that love with her to Atlanta.

Even knowing she's going to lose some (perhaps even most) of the company’s investors isn't enough uncertainty to make her feel fear. She's remembered everything her father did to her when she was young that the combination-Pennywise-and-PTSD bullshit blocked out, and she knows the reason she was so easily swayed by Tom’s charm and faux-kindness. But screw cycles of abuse; Bev is getting the fuck out, and she's never going back. 

She's so grateful that she doesn't have to deal with the divorce herself so soon after rehashing her childhood trauma. Bev is strong as an ox, she's chock full of bravery, but she's just so fucking tired of needing to be. She dealt with Tom for 12 years; Kay can take the lead in extricating her for good. It doesn't erase her resilience. Even the bravest people on earth have to hand over the reins every now and then. She's retraumatized and grieving the loss of her childhood best friend and the first man in her life she didn't feel afraid of—she can let Kay talk to the lawyers about division of assets. Kay knows what Bev wants—as long as she gets the label, she's happy. Tom can have all the money in her bank account, can have the house and everything in it, so long as Bev keeps her name. Beverly Marsh is hers, and Tom Rogan can't ever take it from her. She won't let him. 

It takes 18 hours to drive from Derry to Atlanta, and Eddie continuously said he had no interest in sleeping on a hotel mattress another night when he had been doing so the past week, so they're driving straight through. At least, they’re attempting to. At 11 PM, 200 miles outside of Atlanta, Bev finally convinces Eddie to pull over and get them a hotel room with two beds. Bev doubts Eddie will get much sleep because he’s been guzzling coffee like a feral animal since Pennsylvania. It's uncanny. Every time they pass a rest area, they stop so Richie can pee, Mike can load up on drive-thru french fries and Eddie can order three black coffees for himself and himself only. But it’s fine. At least they’ll make it to Stan in one piece.

Bev remembered her childhood in bits and pieces at first, and then after they squished the clown’s heart in their hands and they were spit out from the hellish pit of snarled sewers, all at once. With the flood of memories that came when they ascended out of the sewers and into the light, into the storm of Derry and their awful childhoods coming down around them, Beverly helped Richie and Ben carry Eddie out while Ben carried Bill's broken body, and the way Richie was crying so hysterically, like he didn't even realize he was, muttering to himself nonsensically things like _ gonna get you outta here, cutie, gonna make you live if it's the last thing I fucking do, _ Bev _ remembered. _It hurts a little that she forgot so much. Being with Richie was comforting like nothing else she's known, even before she remembered he’s gay, his gender is wonky, and he has been madly in love with Eddie Kaspbrak since before she even knew him. 

Richie has been taking Bill’s death harder than any of them, barely coming online long enough to string a coherent sentence together, let alone a joke. In fact, it seems to Bev like Richie knows how to joke better than he knows how to feel, so almost everything out of his mouth comes forth in some Voice. The only time Richie’s been able to speak to Beverly outside of a Voice was when Bev relayed her and Bill’s final conversation to him, the one that went: _ tell Richie I’m sorry. Tell him I love him. _ Ever since that conversation, he’s been speaking in nothing but jokes, rambling nonsensically sometimes like he’s being filmed, recorded. Bev thinks that’s probably the only way he knows how to speak anymore.

But Eddie gets him out of his shell, and he knows it, so after communicating with Patty that they’re stopping their travels for the night, while they’re all getting ready for bed, the five of them all crammed into one hotel room, taking turns showering and brushing their teeth (Eddie goes first, because he demands to, and Richie goes last, because he doesn’t care enough not to), Bev and Eddie sit with Richie on the pullout couch and hold him while he shakes.

Finally, in the dank, dark unfamiliarity of the hotel room and the comforting safety of Bev and Eddie’s hands on him, he says something that isn’t a joke: “Stan tried to kill himself. My best friend could’ve died.” Bev nods, but says nothing. Waits. Eddie does too. “Bill, he— he _ did _die. I fucking hate this. I fucking— why couldn’t we all have made it?”

Eddie lets out a wounded noise and lays his temple to the point of Richie’s shoulder. He says nothing more, perhaps not needing to, so Bev follows his lead and kisses Richie’s cheek before tucking herself snugly into his side. She looks down at their arms crossed over one another’s, sees her fading bruises dark against Richie’s skin, and sighs. God, she knows what Richie means. Fuck the clown for taking Bill from them, for almost taking Stan from them. It’s not fucking fair.

“When I was young, Bill was basically the sun to me,” Mike says from his place at the edge of the bed. Richie’s head shoots up, and cloyingly reaches for him. Mike immediately moves to sit on his haunches in front of Richie’s knees and balances himself there, hands to Richie’s jeans. “He was my fucking hero.”

“He was for all of us, I think,” Eddie says quietly, barely a breath. “I cared about his opinion more than anyone else, even over my mom sometimes.”

“Me, too,” Bev whispers.

A lapse of silence falls over the room, only filled by the sound of water hitting the tub as Ben showers, and then Richie smirks and says, “Bevs, I didn’t know you cared about Eddie’s mom’s opinion. I’ll have to fight you for her.”

“Ugh!” Eddie yells, slapping his thigh sharply as Bev snorts out her laughter. “Gross, dude, we’re like 40, you’d think he’d be done with those jokes by now.”

“You mean done being rad? Never, cutie.”

“What did Richie do now?” Ben asks as he enters the room with only a towel tucked around his waist.

“Woah!” Richie crows, wolf whistling loud enough to make all of them cringe. “Damn, who let the dogs _ out! _ Ben, you’re so fucking hot! What the fuck, dude!”

“Thanks, Richie,” Ben blushes, looking down and toeing at the carpet. “That’s nice of you to say.”

“Nice of me to say?!” Richie demands, shaking Eddie’s shoulders. “Eds, as the only other person in this room attracted to men, am I _ right?! _ Like, _ objectively?” _

“He’s right,” Eddie frowns, eyeing Ben up and down, “like, he’s really, really right.”

“This is amazing,” Bev says, fishing her phone out of her back pocket and turning on the camera. “This is seriously comedy gold.”

_ “Gather ye round and I’ll tell ye a tale of all the hotties Richie can regale,” _ Richie sings, slinging his arms over Bev and Eddie’s shoulders and swaying in time with his song. _ “There’s Eds, and there’s Mikey, and Bev of course too, but the hottest of all is Ben, lads — that’s you!” _

“Richie, c’mon, you’re embarrassing the poor guy!” Mike laughs as Ben buries his face in his hands.

“I’ll only stop when Ben covers that beauty up! I don’t need Eds getting any ideas and leaving me for the next hottest piece of meat he can get his hands on!”

“He’s right,” Eddie sighs, tucking his chin into his palm and exaggerating his heart-eyes, “Ben is hot enough that I might just consider it.”

“Hey!” Richie cries, turning to Eddie with puppy dog eyes. Bev zooms in on his ridiculous face and makes herself laugh. “I’m a sensitive gal, Eds, be nice!”

“Oh, you know you’re the only one for me, angel,” Eddie smiles warmly, cupping Richie’s chin and pulling him forward to kiss him gently.

_ “Awww!” _ Everyone coos. Mike drapes himself over Richie and Eddie’s thighs while they’re licking into each other’s mouths, turns to Bev’s camera and flutters his eyelashes. “Ain’t they just the darndest thing? Right, _ angel?” _

By noon the next day, after Richie’s tuckered himself out by effectively vibrating his way through 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall and lightly naps on Bev’s shoulder, they’re pulling off the highway and Eddie instructs her to gently shake Richie awake.

“Hey, Rich,” she whispers, scratching at his bearded jaw, “we’re almost there.”

“Oh,” Richie mumbles, pushing his glasses up into his curls so he can push his knuckles into his eyes. “Oh!” He jolts and sits upright almost immediately after fully joining them in the waking world, his glasses bouncing back out of his hair and onto his face, which makes Bev snort. “Stan.”

“Yeah. Stan.” 

When Eddie pulls onto Stan’s road, Peach Tree Street, a beautiful development with winding roads and a big white house with a porch swing out front at the end of the cul-de-sac, Richie throws himself out of the car and onto the boiling hot tarmac despite Bev attempting to reel him in. Eddie yells at him through the open window and asks if he has a death wish. Richie ignores him and quite literally sprints across the yard before jumping into Stan’s arms in a way that makes Bev a little nervous. He was only released from the psych ward 24 hours ago, how are his wounds? Is he safe to touch? But then Bev watches as Stanley curls his patched arms around Richie’s back, and is shocked to see him dig his face into Richie’s shoulder and start to cry. 

“Richie,” he sobs, shaking as Richie and Patty rub circles into his back. Bev can hear them clearly once Eddie turns the car off. She tries not to feel like a voyeur—fails. “God, I missed you so fucking much.”

“Yeah, join the club,” Richie responds, voice thick with his own tears. “You ain’t the only one.”

“Such a dick,” Stan all but coos, clutching Richie’s t-shirt between his fingers and Richie laughs, a desperate, blood-and-tears-soaked sound that seems like it was waiting inside him for decades before finally letting itself see the light. 

“Pat, this is Richie,” Stan says, face still tucked into Richie’s neck, “my best friend, God help me. Richie, this lovely lady to my left is my wife, Patty Blum Uris.”

“Hi, Patty Blum Uris,” Richie says, tucking his chin over Stan’s curls so he can look her in the eye as he shakes her hand, “wonderful to finally meet ya.”

“Hi, Richie. I've heard a lot about you this past week. It's good to put a face to the name.” Patty tucks a rogue curl behind her ear, and the wind blows it back out of place the second her hand leaves it. It looks like the wind is trying its hardest to get its hands on her, like the world around her is desperate to touch her. Bev is star-struck from the backseat. “You’re Stan’s best friend, right?”

“And fucking proud of the title, little miss.”

Then, Stan does three things quickly in succession: Stan rolls his eyes affectionately, adjusts his glasses nervously, and tugs his sleeves over his wrists. The first, a tick he got from Eddie; the second, a tick he got from Richie; and the third, a combination of a tick he got from Bill and attempting to cover his scars. Bev wonders if he has any clue just how much he’s carried his friends with him these past 27 years. With the moony way he’s grinning up at Richie, she thinks he might have some idea.

“Stan, introduce me to the rest of your friends!”

“Oh! Oh.” Stan smiles as he adjusts his glasses again and smiles at the van. “Hi, guys.”

“Stanny!” Bev shrieks, ripping her seatbelt off and pitching out of the still-open side door that Richie never got the chance to close. She runs up to him and leaps into his open arms.

“Hey, Beverly,” he chuckles, smiling into her curls. She can feel the way his deep voice vibrates through her skull. She thinks it’s probably the very best feeling in the entire world. “Long time, no see.”

“Yeah, and I’m much worse off for it.” She smiles up at him, her eyes half-closed from the force of it and misting over just a tad. Fuck, she’s missed her boys like crazy. She had no idea just how much until they were all together again. “How the fuck are ya, Uris?”

“I’m alright. I’m…” He looks down, away, and Patty threads her fingers through his, squeezing his hand. He smiles faintly down at their joined hands. “Bev, this is my wife, Patty.”

“It’s a pleasure, Miss Patty.”

“Like from Gilmore Girls!” Patty giggles. Bev shines at her.

“Exactly like from Gilmore Girls. I knew you were going to be my new best friend the moment I laid eyes on you.”

“Exciting! Stan, I have a new best friend!”

It’s been so long since any of them have seen Stan, but Richie in particular cannot let him out of his sight. He even goes so far as to beg Eddie to get his suitcase out of the car for him so he doesn’t have to stop looking at him. Stan blushes, calls him a stupid sap, but doesn’t argue with the idea of it one bit. Because Eddie is a self-proclaimed “good boyfriend,” he does what he’s asked. Stan had been cooking up a complicated welcome feast when the group showed up, and even though Richie can’t cook to save his life, he sits on the kitchen counter by the sink and taps his heels against the cupboards while Stan works. Because Bev is a good guest, she helps out, but mostly does it so that Richie doesn’t have to feel bad for distracting Stan. She’s a saint, she knows.

“I even don’t remember the last time the three of us were alone in a room together,” Richie marvels, grinning when he hears Eddie’s raucous laughter from the living room at a story Patty is telling the group with intensity and passion that could put the sun to shame.

“Richie’s birthday, I think,” Bev says from where she’s roasting garlic and onions for the spinach bread. “1991. Stan spilled milk.”

“Right,” Richie breathes. “Shit, that was. You — Stan, you told me—”

“I know what I told you.” Bev thinks Stan might cut Richie off to avoid him saying whatever it is Stan knew he’d say before Bev can find out, and the skin on the back of her neck prickles in embarrassment at being in the room at all, but then Stan continues. “I told you about my suicidal thoughts.”

“Yeah,” Richie says, voice strangled. “Yeah, you did.” Bev’s eyes dart over at both of them, first to Stan whose back is rigid beside her as he adds beans to the slow cooker, then to Richie on the counter who has since stopped tapping his heels to the beat of the music drawling from Patty’s speakers. She thinks it might be The National, but one of their songs she hasn’t previously heard. Patty has a good taste in music; Bev isn’t surprised.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to kill myself,” Stan says, tilting his head to his wrists. “This is just the first time anyone found out.”

“Oh,” Richie says. “You mean—”

“I mean that I’ve been going to therapy since I was 21, self-harming since I was 15, and in and out of the psych ward all through college, but Patty never knew, at least not about the suicide attempts.”

“How many times?” Richie asks quietly.

“Three. The first two times were with pills. This was the closest I’ve ever gotten.”

“Stan,” Bev says, “you know how glad we are that you didn’t succeed, right?”

“I know you are.” He smiles ruefully down at the pot, and doesn’t look anybody in the eye, despite the fact that both of them are looking at him. “I wish I’d been there, though, because then maybe Bill might still be alive. Wish I hadn’t been such a weak son of a bitch and—”

“Stan, _ no,” _ Richie stresses, sliding off the counter and grabbing Stan by the shoulders to turn him around. Bev is trapped between her friends and the counter and is feeling a bit claustrophobic as a result, but says nothing. This is more important. “Stop. You’re not weak, and it’s not your fault.”

“I didn’t say I thought it was my fault.”

“I know. You said it with your _ eyes, _” Richie says, leaning in close and putting on a psychic Voice. Stan snorts, and Bev smiles. “I know you, Stanley. I know how to read between your lines.”

“Okay, Richie,” Stan sighs, and smiles back at him. "Thanks. Now that I have you guys again, I promise to say something if I ever feel that way again."

"Including the hurting-yourself feelings?" Richie asks, pointing his finger an inch from Stan's chest.

"Including those, yes." Richie smiles, looking misty-eyed, and Stan smiles back. He pushes at Richie’s shoulders a little, making him stumble backwards two paces. “Now back up a bit. You’re in my cooking-sphere.”

“Mine, too.” Bev pokes Richie’s shoulder, and he smiles at both of them. “Back that booty up, Tozier.”

“Okay, okay.” Richie hops back up on the counter, picks at his nails and says, “You know we love you, right, Stan? And you can tell us anything? I won’t even give you shit for it. That’s how much I love you.”

“I know, Richard,” Stan sighs, smiling slightly down at the stew. “I love you, too. Almost as much as I love this stew.” He snorts at his own joke, which makes Bev and Richie laugh as well.

“Move it, Uris, I’ve gotta turn the oven on.”

“Jeez, Bev, you’re mean when you’re cooking.”

“It’s how you raised me.”

“Yes,” Richie says in a deep-pitched Voice, “we raised you. Your parents are not real—especially your d-a-d. Us and your aunt. We are your parents.”

“You know I can spell, right, Richie? It’s important to me that you know that.”

“Babylove, can you set the table?” Stan calls out over his shoulder.

Bev’s jaw drops. Richie squeals. There’s a sudden commotion in the living room. _ “Babylove?!” _ The five of them repeat in unison from separate rooms. 

Eddie slides on his socks into the kitchen. “I’m sorry. It’s just that Mike made fun of me last night for calling Richie ‘angel,’ and I need to make sure I’m hearing this right: Stan, you call Patty _ babylove?” _

“Sure fucking do, Kaspbrak,” Stan glares, pointing his mixing spoon at him. “And if you have any interest in calling Richie that again, you will shut your mouth before you say something you’ll—”

“Stan, honey, don't threaten bodily harm to our guests,” Patty calls from the dining room, silverware clanking together. “At least where they can hear us,” she stage-whispers through giggles. 

“Hey!” Eddie shouts, glaring through the doorway. “Stan ain’t got nothin’ on these guns. I’ll have you know I _ box.” _

“I’m sorry, you _ what?” _ Richie exclaims, practically drooling. “Get the fuck over here so I can kiss the shit out of you, that’s so hot.”

“Ew, not where we eat, heathens,” Bev says, wrinkling her nose in faux-disgust. Eddie does as he’s told anyway, coming to stand between Richie’s legs and lean up to kiss him square on the mouth, and really putting his back into it until he pulls away with Richie’s chest heaving, eyes glazed over and wide as saucers.

“You were saying?”

_ God, _ Bev thinks as she shakes her head, smiling as she puts her loaves of bread into the oven, _ I really, _ ** _really_ ** _ missed my boys. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: frank discussion of suicidality & past suicide attempts, references to self-harm, discussions of death.


	10. November, 2020

_ I haven't stolen things in years  
_ _ Hate flowers but I'm gonna leave you souvenirs  
_ _ Freaking out and paralyzed  
_ _ Your body tells me _

_ If I was one of the good ones  
_ _I don't think you'd like me_  
_ I'm one of the bad ones  
And that's why you feel lucky_

—Bad Ones, Matthew Dear

Ever since she was a kid, Thanksgiving has always been Bev’s least favorite holiday. It’s never been an enjoyable thing for her to have to sit through Tom’s family proceedings, and before him, it’s not like she had much of a blood family to write home about. Back when her father was still alive, that was even more miserable than sitting through Tom’s family watching football with the speakers blasting, although it took her years to really remember it in full. She had her aunt until she passed away in 2010 and her cousin Daisy has children of her own now. Kay doesn’t have a big family, it’s mostly just her, her sister, and her mom. And that’s been fine for Bev since her and Tom’s divorce.

But the Losers have decided to have Thanksgiving together this year, planning meticulously so that they can all be in the same place for the first time since New Year’s 2018. They could only be together for two days then due to Richie’s tour. They usually get together every summer at Mike’s old farmland in the outskirts of Derry that managed to stay upright despite the storm that rocked Derry’s core when they killed the clown. They bring their wives in Stan and Bev’s case, their dogs in Ben, Richie, Eddie, and Mike’s case, and have a week where they all get to run wild and free, make food for each other, play games, go swimming in the quarry, pal around in the old clubhouse, and just _ be _ for a while.

Last year, they had to forgo it due to Stan and Patty having brought home a newborn in June and Richie and Eddie were getting their house ready for the little girl they were trying to foster. All that was fine because they got two weeks in during Richie and Eddie’s wedding the year before.

But Bev misses her boys. She hasn’t met Stan and Patty’s kid yet, a little 17-month-old named William who slept through the night a week after he was born and whose first word was “pattycake,” a game his parents played with him due to his mother’s namesake. She’s only met Richie and Eddie’s little Nora who just turned five a week ago once when Bev and Kay flew to LA to be at the launch party of her new line. The two of them got married that week in a quiet ceremony with Richie as their witness. It was beautiful; Bev already had the big wedding with Tom, and she wasn't a fan of it. 

Nora is firey and boisterous, takes up every inch of a room just by being in it, loudly loves what she loves and proudly hates what she hates. Bev can see everything both of her fathers have given her so clearly, and god, she _ loves _ her. Bev has never wanted children of her own, and Nora didn’t change that, but damn, does she like being an aunt. She just wishes she could spend more time with her. The country is too goddamn big if you ask her.

So when she and Kay’s Lyft pulls up to Richie and Eddie’s house in LA, Bev has to reel herself in to not bang down the door and demand to hug the Toziers for five straight minutes. But then Bev hears Pomgom barking up a storm when she hears the sound of the wheels on Bev and Kay’s suitcases dragging across the pavement, somehow hears Nora’s high-pitched squealing above that, and Bev figures, fuck it, the Toziers will forgive the impoliteness of barging in unannounced. It’s not as if Eddie and Richie haven’t been impolite before.

_ “Toziers, get your cute butts out here right this instant!” _

_ “BEV!” _ She hears Richie scream from inside. The clattering of something dropping into the sink, Richie, Pomgom and Nora all scuttling across the hardwood floor, Richie banging into the door as he surely slides in his socks, _ “Pomgom, back! Back!” _ And then, the door flings open. Richie has a finger hooked into Pomgom’s collar as she scrambles to sniff Bev and Kay. Nora screeches from where she’s toddling through the living room, _ “Aunt Bev, you gotta come in and help us with the pie!” _ Richie looks up from where he’s attempting to reel Pomgom in, smiles big and wide, and fuck, Bev loves her friends so fucking much, loves her wife even more, but no one holds a candle to her best fucking friend.

“Tozier, I swear to god, if you don’t hug me in the next five seconds, I’m going to scream.”

“I believe you. Kay, would you do the honors of holding Pomgom back so she doesn’t pull an escape route and go terrorize the old folks who live next door? She hates old people, which means she’ll hate Eddie and I one day, and I can’t _ wait _ for that.”

“Oh, it’d be my pleasure!” Kay coos, dropping Bev’s hand and reaching out to pet the dog and tuck a finger through her collar. “Hi, Pomgom! Hi! Hi, babygirl! Have you been good for your dads? No? Still terrorizing the neighborhood with your tiny, little legs and your big, mean bark? Yes you are! Hi!”

Kay manages to distract Pomgom long enough to shove Richie onto the porch and close the door behind him. He looks up and tugs Bev into a bone-crushing hug. “Beverly Marsh, you absolute rapscallion.”

“Richard Tozier, I missed the shit out of you. What the fuck?” She squeezes Richie back just as tightly, and with her voice muffled through Richie’s Thanksgiving sweater (a thing she hadn’t known even existed two minutes prior; it’s got a turkey on a plate with the word _ ROASTED AND STUFFED TO THE BRIM _ in huge letters above it). “Has Nora asked what the sweater means yet?”

“She sure has. I think Eddie almost had a heart attack when she did.”

“You’re going to send that poor man to an early grave. What’d you tell her?”

“That I was stuffed to the brim with love for my beautiful daughter and my loving husband. What else did you expect me to say? She’s five.”

“Idiot.”

“Asshole. I missed you too.”

“Anyone here yet?”

“Nope, just you as of now.”

_ “Richie! Back in the kitchen, pronto! These potatoes aren’t going to mash themselves!” _ Eddie cries from within the house. _ “And bring Bev! I demand a hug!” _

“Coming, dear!” Richie trills. He pulls back and grins at her. “Shit, motherfuck, good goddamn, I _ really _ missed you.”

Bev laughs, “Eddie still keeping that swear jar in plain sight?”

“Ugh,” Richie groans, banging his head lightly against the door. “The man is going to run me out of house and home.”

“Like Nora doesn’t get a kick out of yelling _ JAR! _ when you slip up.”

“She _ is _ her father’s daughter after all.” 

Bev threads an arm behind Richie’s back, he does the same, and they walk back in the house. Pomgom immediately jumps from Kay’s lap and pants up at Richie. “Hi, little girl! Are you getting reacquainted with Auntie Kay?”

“She sure was. I miss her already.” Kay frowns petulantly from her place on the couch.

“I swear, that dog thinks Richie is going to disappear forever the second he’s out of her sight,” Eddie sighs. Bev can see his frame through the kitchen door. He seems to have given up hope Richie will mash the potatoes and is doing it himself. “I tried my hardest to get her to sleep through the night without him. It was a lost cause. She’s more attached to him than I am. Sometimes I wonder who really married who.” He twists around and smiles at Bev. “Long time, no see, Marsh.”

“It’s been too long, Kaspbrak. How’re the kids?”

“Holding up. How’s the wife?”

“Love her more every day.”

“Awww,” Kay and Richie coo in unison, both swooning. Eddie’s smile widens as he rolls his eyes and turns back to the counter. “Romance,” Richie sighs happily. “How come you don’t love me like that anymore, Eds? Is the honeymoon phase really over?”

“I tell you I love you every single day, idiot. Have you somehow forgotten?”

“I could never.” Richie touches his fingers to his chest, aghast. “Beverly, do you hear this blasphemy?”

“I do. But enough about your love, I want my niece and I want her _ now.” _

“Who you talkin’ ‘bout, li’l ol’ me?” Nora says in a cowboy Voice, sauntering in from the kitchen, dramatically swinging her hips from side to side. “Why, I’m just a li’l lady, I cannot handle the burnin’ hot spotlight.”

“Oh, my God,” Bev breathes, eyes lighting up as she looks between Nora and Richie. “Richie, you neglected to tell me your daughter is a carbon copy of you.”

“Oh, did I not mention it? Yeah, she’s the light of my entire, stupid life.”

“Auntie Bev! Gimme a hug!”

“Nora…” Eddie warns from the kitchen. Nora crumples in on herself, embarrassed. 

“Sorry, papa. Puh-lease...”

“Good girl.”

Bev runs at her, galloping enough to make Nora laugh and pull her out of her embarrassment. She really is her fathers’ daughter—she can forget any emotion, no matter how bad, with enough laughter. “Daddy!” Nora screams to Richie, directly into Bev’s ear, “look, it's Aunt Bev!” 

Nora reaches up and gets a vice grip with her arms around Bev’s neck. Bev laughs at the affection, big and bold, not frightened at all. It’s been a long and wonderful four years since Tom. “Nora Anastasia Tozier, how have you been?" Bev demands, grinning from ear to ear. "Let me get a good look at you.”

Nora shakes her head, “No, not done huggin’.”

Bev smiles into her dirty-blonde mess of curls. “Okay, baby.”

Eddie sighs dramatically and wearily from the kitchen, stirring something in a big mixing bowl. Hopefully his world-famous blueberry muffins. “I can’t believe my daughter got a hug before me. I’m in mourning.”

“Aw, Eds, if you wanted a hug, all you had to do was ask!” Richie says dreamily, floating into the kitchen and hugging Eddie from behind. Eddie’s nose scrunches up like it always does when he’s trying not to smile.

“Thanks, Rich.”

“Anytime, baby,” Richie grins, hiding his face in Eddie’s shoulder.

Bev smiles and rolls her eyes with all the affection only family—her _real_ family—can bring. “Nora, darling, how do you deal with your fathers?” 

“I know, Auntie Bev, they’re soooo embarrassing,” Nora bemoans, tucking one of Bev’s tightly-shorn curls around her finger like she always does with Richie. “Why they gotta make me so embarrassed all da time?”

“I wish I knew,” Bev sighs, playing pretend with her. _ “Now _ can I get a good look at you?”

“Why, yes, Miss Aunt Bev, you may if you please,” Nora says, in a lofty Elizabethan Voice. Bev snorts and so does Eddie. “Am I pretty? Am I _ beautiful?” _ she asks, spinning in a circle that almost makes her topple over. Bev steadies her by the shoulders.

“Gosh, you really are, Norie,” Bev sighs with a dreamy tone. “What a pretty girl you are turning out to be.”

“N’aw, Miss Aunt Bev, you’re ‘mbarrassing me…” Nora digs a socked toe into the hardwood, rocking back and forth in a little circle.

“My apologies, Miss Niece Nora, whatever can I do to make it up to you?”

“Hmm…” Nora touches her fingers to her chin, then gasps dramatically, the finger pointed upright in the air. “I got it! Another hug, please.”

“Oh, my pleasure,” Bev coos, sitting on the floor and dragging a squirming Nora into her lap.

“She’s really into hugs lately,” Eddie explains from where Richie is still holding him, rocking the two of them side to side. He starts pouring the mix into the muffin tin—hell yeah, muffins. “She can’t go to bed without a hug from each of us. It’s quite precious.”

“Did you hear that, Miss Aunt Bev? I’m quiet presh-iss,” Nora says, the Elizabethan Voice back in full swing.

“I did hear that, Miss Niece Nora. Your dads love you very much,” Bev says, poking her rotund little belly.

“Aren’t I lucky!” she squeals, wiggling. “Aunt _ Bev! _ You’re tickling meeee!”

“Who, me?” Bev says, continuing to poke her. “No, you must be mistaken, Norie, I’m not tickling anybody.”

The doorbell rings. “Saved by the bell,” Eddie chuckles, handing off the muffin batter to Richie and instructing him to pour—"_Carefully,”_—and opens the door to Stan who is holding William, Patty, and Mike. Stan has his arm around Mike’s waist, clearly having just seen him. Mike’s dog, Mr. Chips, is held by his leash, panting and attempting to break free to visit with Pomgom. “Hi, friends, welcome welcome. Come in.”

“Thanks, Eddie,” Stan says quietly, handing William off to Patty so he can shuck off his coat.

“Look, Aunt Bev!” Nora squeals, pointing dramatically. “It’s Little Will!”

Bev shushes her, hiccuping laughter through it. “Nora, honey, he’s sleeping. Gotta be quiet.”

“Yeah, he always sleeps in the car, every time, without fail,” Patty smiles. She hands Will back off to Stan and reaches for Kay, still wearing her coat, unable to keep her hands off her. Bev knows the feeling. “Katherine McCall, how the heck are you?”

“Patricia Blum-Uris, I’m happy as a clam,” Kay laughs as Patty jumps onto the couch and smothers her with a hug.

“Wow,” Mike rumbles, chuckling lowly so as not to disturb Will. “They’re acting like they don’t Facetime every other day.”

“It’s _ different,” _ Kay hisses. Mike puts up his hands in defense.

“Was that _ Mike?” _ Richie gasps from the kitchen. The mixing bowl clatters to the counter and he runs into the living room. “Mikey!”

“Again, sleeping baby,” Stan smiles, rolling his eyes.

“Sorry, Will,” Richie cringes, tip-toeing towards them. Will adjusts in Stan’s arms, and sighs dramatically in his sleep before settling. “Wow,” Richie sighs, stars in his eyes. “Babies.” 

“Don't give him any ideas,” Eddie says fondly, barely holding back a smile. “He's been begging me for another baby for months.”

Richie looks up at Stan and Mike, grinning. “But I don't need one now! I have my other babies!”

“Oh, Richie, you know you’re the only man for me,” Mike laughs, curling his arms around Richie’s waist.

“Wow! My stars, how lucky I am to bring my men home to the folks!” Richie gently tosses an arm around Stan’s neck, reeling him and Will in for a group hug. Bev squeezes her arms around Nora, smiling like she hasn’t in years. Fuck, it feels good to be with her friends again.

The doorbell rings, and Richie gasps dramatically. _ “Ben.” _

“Ben,” Ben says through the door. “And Rocky.”

“Ben! And more dogs!” Richie throws the door open and pitches himself into Ben’s arms.

“Hi Richie,” he chuckles warmly. He looks up at everyone, spitting Richie’s hair out where it’s gotten in his face. He releases Rocky’s collar, but the dog sits dutifully by his side, even though he’s panting and clearly wanting to go see Pomgom and Mr. Chips. Bev can only imagine how much work it must’ve taken to train a dog that well. Ben reaches down and pets the collie’s head. “Good boy, Rocky. You can go.” Rocky breaks out into a full run, galloping inside as he jumps on Mr. Chips, a giant yellow lab. Pomgom looks dwarfed in comparison, nipping at their legs. “Can I get anyone’s bags? I see they’re all on the porch.”

“That would be great, Ben, thank you,” Kay chuckles. “As you can see, my arms are filled with Patty.”

“And who would I be to deny you such a pleasure?” Ben laughs, patting Richie on the back and turning to the porch to bring the bags in.

It feels like it’s been years since Bev has thought about how bad Thanksgiving used to be, how awful life was without Kay proudly by her side, how insurmountable the world felt without the Losers just a call away. But being with them all together in one place is so wonderful. She hasn’t felt so at home in her skin in years, but with the Losers and their kids all in arms’ reach, their dogs playing at their feet, Nora holding Will with the amount of care and attention Bev has never seen on a five year old, she feels like if she can just hold onto the feeling, this love, this care, she will never be unhappy again.

She looks up at the pictures on the walls of the living room as they all retire to the living room after gorging themselves on Eddie’s delicious dinner. There’s lots from when they were kids that Richie got from his mother, a photostrip of all seven of them packed into a photobooth in Derry’s arcade, a few of Sandy and Richie from the early-00s, but the one that really catches her eye is the one that’s framed in her and Kay’s apartment, too—the selfie Richie demanded they take at the Chinese restaurant when they were reunited. It breaks her heart that Stan isn’t in the picture, but it hurts even more that Bill can’t be in the one Eddie is setting them all up in the living room to take right now. Kay’s legs are thrown over Bev’s, curling around her, and Bev feels one wrong breath away from snapping in half. She misses Bill so fucking much, it feels like a sickness.

“You okay, baby?” Kay asks quietly as Ben sits beside her and puts an arm around her shoulders. Eddie, holding Nora on his hip, stands quietly behind them, a strong presence just like Mike at his side, nothing like the familiar, frenetic energy of Richie, pulling attention away from anything other than grief.

“Yeah,” Bev sniffs, smiling and nodding. “I’m okay. I just miss Bill.”

Kay’s mouth pulls downward, and she nods. “Yeah, I know you do, baby. But he’s here with us, you know.”

“Sometimes, I like that thought,” she says quietly. Ben squeezes her shoulders, clearly hearing her speak, but not wanting to interrupt. She loves them all fiercely. “That he’s watching over us. But I like to think more often that he’s found true peace. That he doesn’t need to watch over us for us all to still be happy. He’s certainly at peace with Georgie, that's all he really ever wanted—and I’m happy now. I am. My life is so, so good. I have so many friends. I never thought I’d have them again. I have you. Tom is gone, my dad is dead, and all the men in my life are nothing like them. They’re kind and gentle and loving. My life is so good, Kay, I promise. I’m so happy.”

“Yeah?” Kay prompts with a smile. She bumps her shoulder against Bev’s, jostling Ben’s hand but not dislodging it. Ben just presses his hand tighter; it doesn’t feel like a vice like Tom’s did. The Losers taught her that not all men are out to get her, and she will always love them for that.

“Yeah. I just miss him.”

“I know, Beverly,” Ben interjects quietly. “We all do.” Bev lays her head on Ben’s shoulder, feeling the quietude only he can bring, and nods. She looks up at Patty setting the phone up on the mantle, setting it on a ten second timer before running to Stan and Will’s side while Will babbles semi-nonsensically. Pomgom sleeps peacefully in Kay’s lap, Mr. Chips and Rocky in a tangled lump at her feet. Kay’s fingers tangle in her’s, and she squeezes.

“Ready, guys?” Richie cries, squeezing Bev’s shoulder. She looks up at him, he looks back, and together, they smile. It's been a long time coming, but the kindness and benevolence that Bev has always given to everyone around her has come back around. She knows it will last for the rest of her long, happy life, and she's going to have all these wonderful people for the rest of it, too. She's happy. Finally, she's so, so happy. 

“Ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well! that's all folks! this two-year-long (to the day!) project has finally come to a close. i love everyone who has commented or kudosed or even just read along with this series. thank you for trusting me with these characters, and i hope you loved reading it as much as i loved writing it. i hope your lives are beautiful and you enjoy every minute of them. stay healthy, stay safe, stay inside, stay golden. i love you all.

**Author's Note:**

> here's [other places to find me](http://rebecca.carrd.co).


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